I posted the following on my personal Facebook profile immediately after reading the Times poll headline: "Upset about the new NYT poll that points to a real possibility that Donald Trump could become the next president? Don't obsess, panic, complain, compartmentalize, bemoan. GET TO WORK. I'm happy to help anyone find impactful ways to help between now and 11/5. Just email me at info@indivisiblemarin.org if you'd like any guidance on ways that YOUR ACTIONS can help change the outcome."
As readers of Robert's blog, you all are incredibly engaged, informed and caring. THIS ELECTION WILL BE WON OR LOST BY THE MARGIN OF EFFORT. If you are not already volunteering time on a regular basis to do direct voter outreach work - phonebanks, canvassing, postcards, texting - please start right away and make it a PRACTICE until 11/5. Here's a 2 minute video of me talking to the volunteers at IndiMarin about a good way to turn our volunteering for Dems into a practice, a discipline, that will help keep us all consistent in our efforts over the course of the year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI4QnIjtRww
We can win this. But it will take all of us. As Max Lucado said, "No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”
Thank you, Susan. I think that's the right attitude. I almost wonder--what if Biden were ahead by 10 points in every poll? Would we be as motivated, or would we be risking a repeat of 2016? I think the anti-Biden bias of the NYT and other media is outrageous, dangerous and unprofessional, but my response to every story like this is to write more postcards or send another small donation or sign up for a phone bank. It's going to take all of us, and maybe the silver lining is that they are keeping us motivated.
I am part of a Saturday Zoom Postcarding/Letter Writing group sponsored by Swing Left Inland Valley CA (despite me living in NC). This past Saturday we had at least a half dozen new volunteers, which I found very encouraging.
I want to put in a plug for Vote Forward (www.votefwd.org) which will be launching their first 2024 campaigns on Wednesday (the day after Super Tuesday). They combine high-tech data analytics to find low-propensity voters with heart-felt hand-written messages from their grassroots volunteers to motivate these folks to go out and vote. If you are not yet a volunteer, please sign up: https://votefwd.org/instructions. To read about their impact in past elections check out this article: https://votefwd.org/impact.
Vote Forward wants to start 2024 off with a bang, so they encouraged their vounteers to host an in-person or virtual letter-writing party. Here is a link to some of the virtual events that are open to the public: https://www.mobilize.us/?event_type=27&is_virtual=true. If it is a regularly occuring event it will show "See Details & More Times" vs. simply "See Details".
100% Susan! On my drive back from a great day of canvassing, I did my best to talk my two active and politically minded buddies off the cliff about the poll (which I did not read). I asked them if they seriously believed that Trump's appeal among women was increasing. To me, that says it all about this "poll".
Yay, Susan! When you say, "...turn our volunteering for Dems into a practice, a discipline..." it reminds me of when you go on a diet, lose 80 or so pounds, only to gain it all and more once you stop your diet. Those who have turned their diet into a lifestyle, invariably keep the weight off! Those who turn their volunteering for Dems into a practice, ensure that democracy has a better chance of winning!
First off, "Small" is a kind description for a poll of this complexity. The poll interviews 128 Hispanic and 108 Blacks to make the assertion that Biden is somehow losing those voter groups. Ridiculous in the extreme. Imagine you were the chief marketing exec for a consumer product company. Your basic product was purchased by 175 million Americans. You had to decide if the label on the product should be Blue or Red. You have a $500 million marketing budget to allocate across the US. Is there any version of reality in which you would poll just 128 Hispanic consumers and 108 Black consumers to decide how to target your advertising? If Nate Cohn was your pollster, he'd be fired and the Sienna polling org would be dropped...........................................
The NYTs should stop reporting their mini polling data as anything other than the view of 980 Americans, unrepresentative of voters as a whole.
And by the way, when a pollster asks a question about (old) age, the pollster is implanting the idea that chronological age is important – not a professional thing to do.
Replacing Biden, the best president we've had since LBJ pre-Vietnam, based on results deliver would be a catastrophe. Entertainers like Ezra Klein or John Stewart or arrogant analysts like Nate Cohn, regardless of the size of their egos, do not get to "appoint" presidents. Voters do. The best revenge against the Biden nay-sayers is to elect Biden in 2024.
Are you saying that these so-called journalists just want to be heard?
Actually, what are they attempting to prove? They paid a company to poll what they wanted to say! Case closed. Polling is a science and not a journalism course!
Must be nice to these know it alls to live in their little bubbles and be so self assured about the world that you can dictate what’s good for the rest of us schlubs. There’s a whole world of hurting people out there but the NYT and others in my view knowingly trash the president for their own greedy advantage. The results of their selective poll was broadcast all over corporate media yesterday by talking heads as a simple dictate of the mighty news pompous intelligentsia. So appallingly lazy and self congratulatory.
Robert, I don’t know how many times you have stated that polls, especially the ones taken early, are to be ignored. I never look at them because they are always skewed mostly because their sample questions are terrible and their sample size is not big enough. I really think you’ve made your point about them enough. Just my opinion.
NYT just does not want to give Biden any leeway. I also think readership has decreased to the point that the editors obsess over whether the titles to their stories will cause enough mayhem to bring them revenue. All I know is that Trump had a very pathetic showing in tonight’s primary and I couldn’t be happier. It won’t last, of course, but it was nice.
Tomorrow is Scotus Time. Let’s see if they screw Trump or us. I will put some cents towards US!
What you have been doing. If it were me, I would have a brief boilerplate answer pointing them to an analysis you’re preparing for your next newsletter.
I found your brief summary of the poll’s flaws to be full of talking points. Thank you!
“Ignore the Polls” is good advice because so many of them are poorly constructed, because, at best, a single poll “measures” only a point in time, etc.
However, in another dimension, the polls should not be entirely ignored: many people pay attention – a political fact. In that regard, “ignore the polls” is a bit like saying, “Ignore Trump’s rants” because the rants lack solid content. Unfortunately, they have political significance.
Trying to reason with those few hundred is like pulling teeth, I imagine. If you can present statistics, factual evidence to them that shows polls, especially early ones, are not a viable tool, then maybe you will win a few over. As the saying goes “ You can please people all of the time…”
I dropped my subscription to the NY times and I get a daily "re-subscribe for $50 for first year". This is supposedly a limited time offer, but I think it has been close to a year since I dropped it. I get far more value from being a paid subcriber to several substacks like Robert's.
Hey Marlene, here we go again. A short while ago, Fern McBride posted an editorial by Nicholas Kristoff on Heather's post of tonight. As a followup to our previous discussion, this might be of interest to you. It's a readable share.
I love Kristoff, but he missed one double standard: There is virtually no repotting on how Hamas continues to expose Gazans to death and injury by still embedding its fighters in civilian areas and continuing to hold hostages. Nor have I seen any reporting, at any time, pointing out that Hamas constructed 450 miles of tunnels in a territory only 25 miles long, but set none of them, none at all, aside as civilian air raid shelters. I don’t mean that as a comment on what Israel has been doing—which may well be committing suicide—but it would be nice to see just a little perspective.
I am late in replying, RR, but thanks for reposting what Fern sent. The US cannot hide from the fact that we have caused conflicts in our lifetime. The two Bushes put us in Iraq and Afghanistan but before that, we were in Vietnam. I will never condone what Netanyahu is doing and has done…never! At least Joe is sending a ship of food and medicine to be distributed to the Palestinian people. I am not encouraged that Bibi will permit a ceasefire because now he’s demolishing Rafah. It is all very frightening.
If you really want to get worked up, read Smedley Butler, the long ago Comandant of the USMC. He led all the US colonial invations since the Spanish-American war and spilled the beans after he retired in the mid-1930s. "War is a Racket" is one early book of is. He foiled a Nazi coup attempt in the mid 1930s, before the next one in 1939, detailed by Rachel Maddow in her podcast "Ultra".
Nazis are alive and well today, in our country, bideing their time for the next one, which looks like it's on right now. Bibi is another Likud fascist collaborator. Likud was hooked up with Mussolinni in the 1930s. Bibi needs the war with Hamas to stay out of jail, like someone else we are dealing with. More later, sleep tight. Send me a message if something comes up to discuss.
I think you’re missing a critical point. The NYT is reporting on a poll that was taken and what the interpretation of that data was by a pollster. This is somewhat news worthy but what is always missing in a deep dive about the “ mechanic’s” of the poll and its validity and the confidence if it’s a fair sample of voter opinion.
I have not been upset by the poll, because I deleted it after reading the headline. I do not trust the NYT coverage of this election, and honestly, it has impacted the way I look at every topic they cover now. I read yesterday a discussion of an in house debate at the NYT on a piece covering Hamas weaponizing sexual violence, which was leaked to The Intercept. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/new-york-times-israel-gaza-leak
This is the concern I have about the NYT at this point. They are not up to coverage of the big issues of the day. This election is the most important in our lifetimes, for the USA and the planet. The NYT is not covering it with the appropriate urgency. I feel like the Russian bots have taken over at the Times.
I saw the Times poll headline and didn't bother to read. I knew you'd have a great takedown of it, Mr. Hubbell, so I waited. Thank you, again. The NYT has gone off the rails. What a shame. Now when people say you can't believe MSM, which I've always deplored, I can't help but think of the Times. How's that for a twist?
The Washington Post has become so disappointing that I finally cancelled my subscription which I had for many years. In spite of having an extreme distrust of social media, here I am on Substack ( yes, I am aware it is not social media).
I have an MS in Statistics and one of the more interesting classes I took was "Survey Design and Analysis". I won't bore you with the geeky details, but one of the things that was covered was how easy it is to bias a survey (or poll) by how questions were worded. Another big topic was choosing the participants and the importance of having your sample be representative of your target population as a whole. I took this class in 2006 or 2007 and I have looked at polling and surveys with a totally different lens.
And for those of you who are not math geeks like me, a poll's "margin of error" is simply based on the sample size and a statistical formula and tells you zilch about the quality of the poll's construction, selection of recipients, or biases.
I also studied grad level statistics, and completely agree with you. These are things that the many of the so-called "analysts" don't understand, and thus do not know how to report a poll in a way that makes sense. I've written about this many times, but because so few people are ever taught about what polls are and how they are constructed, it it something that needs repetition over and over. I worry more about the misrepresentation of the polls by media than about the "polls" themselves.
I agree. I sometimes wonder if these columnists go looking for a poll that supports their pre-existing belief. Because they seriously leave their common sense behind.
1) Donald Trump is claiming credit for the Dobbs decision. (Truth)
2) Women are up in arms about the Dobbs decision and are showing it with their votes ever since the decision in the summer of 2022. (Truth).
3) Current NY times poll shows a huge swing TOWARDS Donald Trump amongst women (WTH?? That one sprains my brain!)
Designers and the implementers should be subjected to cross examination.
When I used to hear "big box" cases, the experts' always challenged the sample size.
Need to know the demographic of the sample, whether they have a track record re validity. If the subjects had a low validity coefficient,, the entire study is probably worthless.
Yup. In this one, the range of error would be larger than the entire sample size. Kind of fun to think about, actually, considering the NYT's tanking reputation for clarity and, well, truth.
Yeah, this "poll" has several brain-twisters like that, as Robert pointed out. I tried to grasp how they could have come up with some of their conclusions, but it made my head hurt, so I quit.
Here's a take on surveys - at least from my "representative, Burgess Owens "Your Pro-Life Champion in Congress". When I and my neighbors’ friends answered Burgess Owen's 1/18/24 "pro-life" survey - "NO" gives an ERROR (over and over); I suppose “YES" doesn’t but I didn’t want to try. Burgess can claim that 100% of his district voted pro-life on his survey. His webpage states all the ways he is “pro life”. There was no link to the survey on webpage and a phone call to Burgess' (former football player) office goes no where. I even asked the investigative team at the newspaper in town to investigate. Will count all the "yeses" I suspect and will seem like "pro life" is Utah’s inclination.
As the neighbor who sent the survey to me stated " Many friends have the same problem [with the survey that only accepts a "YES" answer]. I guess that he doesn’t want to hear from those that don’t support him."
Original message from neighbor:
"Your chance to make it known that you are pro choice. Just check "no" that you do not support his pro life. Please forward to your friends."
Here is part of what Wikipedia said, didn’t find anything more definitive.
“ The phrase was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.[1] However, the phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death. Several other people have been listed as originators of the quote, and it is often attributed to Twain himself.[3]”
I came on to post the same thing. Moreover, I’ve been wondering if those supposedly pro Hillary poll results in 2016 didn’t act as a spur on the pro trump voters to work on behalf of their candidate and conversely act as a narcotic on pro Hillary voters to lull them into complacency. So seeing the NYT headline (didn’t read further), I wondered if it’ll have the same effect on 2024 voters and seeing confirmation of the stimulant reaction in the comments here. Now I can only hope that this will cause Trump voters to feel he’s winning so why bother to vote.
Reason? Quality of hired employees. They are merely wanting a JOB not a career! They are not well educated and want to leave the office at 3:30 pm on Fridays! Lack expertise and loyalty, also. “How much vacation time do I have.” Easy in and joy ride out?
In addition to all that Robert says here about the recent NYT poll, consider this:
Only 823 potential voters nation-wide completed the full survey. If evenly distributed, that's 16.5 voters per state. If weighted by population, 98 respondents would represent all of California and 2 would represent all of Wyoming.
There were over 154 million voters in the 2020 election. A little basic arithmetic reveals that the survey questioned .0005 of 1% of the number of actual voters in 2020. It's absurd to suggest that some magic formula can correctly identify the demographic of any one person who accurately represents 187,000 others.
If even a half-dozen respondents are mis-identified, that represents a shift of over a million votes. This is nonsense.
@Jerry I see that Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) says that “several” House Republicans are willing to sign a discharge petition to force MAGA Mike to bring a national security supplemental measure to the floor for a vote. A simple majority can force a vote on a bill through a discharge petition, but such a measure is rare because it undermines the House speaker. With Johnson refusing to take up the Senate measure, Fitzpatrick and his colleague Representative Jared Golden (D-ME) have prepared their own pared-down aid measure. If you had anything to do with it, thanks. Hope it works.
Mike Johnson will not attempt any vote if his master in FL over rules it! Timid is as timid does! Johnson is nervous and useless in that position. He will be gone by years end. Thankfully? But it may be much worse??
Thank you for the take-down of the NYT/Siena poll and the other tidbits of our reality, Robert. I pasted a clip of your first example of that on Heather's tonight to refere so many of those wringing their hands over it to read what you had to say.
I confess the NYT poll irritated me a lot. To work out frustration, so I could get back on a positive track, I wrote a sparky letter to the editor. Then I decided to submit it, even though I know it won't be published. (It will be read by someone. )
I offer it here for your amusement:
To the Editor:
Sunday’s article “Warning Lights Flash for Biden, Times Poll Finds” increases concerns about The New York Times’ age. At 172 years, it seems to struggle covering 21st century elections.
As the Times doubles down on polls with relatively small samples, taken many months before the election, some wonder whether it’s time to guide the publication – lovingly and respectfully – off the political centerstage. Relying on survey responses from those who answer a telephone, while failing to discuss impacts of polls’ margins of error, suggests a newspaper sadly out of touch.
Some saw warning signs in Times news coverage, which focuses on vintage horse-race reporting in an increasingly complex election landscape. Virtually ignoring grassroots political activists and downplaying support for Biden in Democratic voting, the paper over-emphasizes Trump’s primary wins and minimizes possible effects of his flame-throwing rhetoric and criminal indictments.
But polls are where the paper’s age really shows. And when predictions fall short, the Times acts forgetful and confused.
At the end of the next presidential term, the Times will be pushing 180. More and more readers may wonder if this newspaper is just too old to be an effective source of political news.
And excellent piece of satire, Mary. I appreciate good satire and thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Well done! It should be widely read and treated as an American treasure! Preserved in the LOC. I am not being facetious when I say that. It should be part of our recorded history.
Two days in a row upper right hand corner of the NYT the headline blasting out anti-Biden bias. I attempted to cancel before and will try again. They must be desperate to hold on to customers. I am embarrassed to have this on my doorstep.
It’s only value to me is that I recycle them to the SPCA where they shred them to line areas for dogs to shit on. Seems so fitting!
As much as I try to stay focused and involved in preserving democracy this is so defeating. How did we become a nation where a major newspaper has no shame about its bias. Years ago I couldn’t wait to read many of their columnists but now I have no respect for anyone associated with this rag and with other forms of corporate media.
I have a free recipe app on my tablet called Cookmate that I downloaded from the GooglePlay store.
You can import recipes from websites by using the URL. I'm not sure how it would work from a recipe box on a website, but if it links to the original posts to each recipe in the Times, it might work.
I avoid saving the links- access can change. My fav way of saving recipes is as clips to EverNote. That way they are right on my desktop. That said, since I am not a NYT subscriber I may have missed some good ones. WaPo has some excellent recipes though, esp of the kinds of things I like to eat.
Keep trying. It took me 7 or 8 tries to quit smoking before I was successful. So now I don't smoke and don't support newspapers with a palatable agenda different from mine.
I cancelled my NY Times subscription yesterday and gave the reason that their reporting in general is biased against Biden and favored controversy for the sake of controversy. Specifically, the polling story was the last straw.
I cancelled my home delivery last month and am ready to cancel digital access after the latest survey and its treatment. I’m a PhD trained sociologist and found the survey and their interpretation of it to be shocking for a major newspaper. I agree with Robert’s comments about NYT bias. One additional concern is that whomever is monitoring their comments to a digital article is also biased. I offered a brief comment about telephone surveys and it was rejected at least five times yesterday…they never did agree to publish my comment in the comments section, which I find almost as troubling as their headlines and biased presentation of the survey. I used no angry words and was civil/professional in tone, but they rejected the comment about the limitations of telephone surveys in an era when the majority of Americans do NOT own a landline AND the majority of cellphone users report that they never answer their cell phones if the number is unknown. These facts are important when trying to interpret small telephone surveys. If you read closely, NYT authors do NOT mention that these are telephone surveys.
I took Robert’s advice from long ago and ignore the polls... the information about Hunter Biden and the fact that Robert slogged through lots of the testimony (239 Pages??) tells me Robert is super human and once again, the MSM has failed at every aspect of their jobs. Postcards, texts await... onward!
Robert, the NYT poll could have asked an analogous question regarding Trump to the NYT Biden question: "Is Biden just too old?". It would be: "Is Trump just too corrupt?".
A better Trump question might be "Is Trump too unstable?" Some Trump supporters accept his corruption as "sticking it to the man", and don't seem troubled by it. The ones who seem to be pulling away and thus reachable are the ones who see him as increasingly unstable. A responsible pollster would be taking this aspect into account and questioning it.
Good points. People who still support Trump are probably unpersuadable, however. If they have come this far in accepting him being a fraud, a criminal, a rapist, a bully, a racist, quoting the worst of Hitler, and his mob-boss-like total family's corruption, I don't think anything will change their minds. It is the people who haven't been paying attention that can still be persuaded and both his corruption and evident mental instability and decline will factor into their decision.
I posted the following on my personal Facebook profile immediately after reading the Times poll headline: "Upset about the new NYT poll that points to a real possibility that Donald Trump could become the next president? Don't obsess, panic, complain, compartmentalize, bemoan. GET TO WORK. I'm happy to help anyone find impactful ways to help between now and 11/5. Just email me at info@indivisiblemarin.org if you'd like any guidance on ways that YOUR ACTIONS can help change the outcome."
As readers of Robert's blog, you all are incredibly engaged, informed and caring. THIS ELECTION WILL BE WON OR LOST BY THE MARGIN OF EFFORT. If you are not already volunteering time on a regular basis to do direct voter outreach work - phonebanks, canvassing, postcards, texting - please start right away and make it a PRACTICE until 11/5. Here's a 2 minute video of me talking to the volunteers at IndiMarin about a good way to turn our volunteering for Dems into a practice, a discipline, that will help keep us all consistent in our efforts over the course of the year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI4QnIjtRww
We can win this. But it will take all of us. As Max Lucado said, "No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”
Thank you, Susan. I think that's the right attitude. I almost wonder--what if Biden were ahead by 10 points in every poll? Would we be as motivated, or would we be risking a repeat of 2016? I think the anti-Biden bias of the NYT and other media is outrageous, dangerous and unprofessional, but my response to every story like this is to write more postcards or send another small donation or sign up for a phone bank. It's going to take all of us, and maybe the silver lining is that they are keeping us motivated.
The negative spin is absolutely inspiring action. The NYT is inadvertently fueling a Democratic powering-up process. Watch us win!
Maybe it isn’t inadvertent
I prefer team Blue feeling like an underdog and hungry and motivated then like I’m going to cruise to victory.
Agree, Ellen. I'm motivated!
Great points and approach, Ellen! Thanks for all you are doing for our country!
I am part of a Saturday Zoom Postcarding/Letter Writing group sponsored by Swing Left Inland Valley CA (despite me living in NC). This past Saturday we had at least a half dozen new volunteers, which I found very encouraging.
I want to put in a plug for Vote Forward (www.votefwd.org) which will be launching their first 2024 campaigns on Wednesday (the day after Super Tuesday). They combine high-tech data analytics to find low-propensity voters with heart-felt hand-written messages from their grassroots volunteers to motivate these folks to go out and vote. If you are not yet a volunteer, please sign up: https://votefwd.org/instructions. To read about their impact in past elections check out this article: https://votefwd.org/impact.
Vote Forward wants to start 2024 off with a bang, so they encouraged their vounteers to host an in-person or virtual letter-writing party. Here is a link to some of the virtual events that are open to the public: https://www.mobilize.us/?event_type=27&is_virtual=true. If it is a regularly occuring event it will show "See Details & More Times" vs. simply "See Details".
I am looking forward to this campaign by votefwd!
Me too!
Good stuff. Do you share contacts and opportunities with Jessica Craven?? She is very on top of what to get involved with too.
Yes!! I'm a huge fan of Jessica's work and Substack and we are in touch frequently. A true heroine for democracy!
That she is.
when we organize we win - Heather Booth.
Don't agonize, organize - Nancy Pelosi
Two great quotes by two of my most admired role models. Thanks for sharing, Pat!
100% Susan! On my drive back from a great day of canvassing, I did my best to talk my two active and politically minded buddies off the cliff about the poll (which I did not read). I asked them if they seriously believed that Trump's appeal among women was increasing. To me, that says it all about this "poll".
Great work to be out canvassing! Those face-to-face conversations are the most impactful of all!
Yay, Susan! When you say, "...turn our volunteering for Dems into a practice, a discipline..." it reminds me of when you go on a diet, lose 80 or so pounds, only to gain it all and more once you stop your diet. Those who have turned their diet into a lifestyle, invariably keep the weight off! Those who turn their volunteering for Dems into a practice, ensure that democracy has a better chance of winning!
I'm going back to postcarding now...
First off, "Small" is a kind description for a poll of this complexity. The poll interviews 128 Hispanic and 108 Blacks to make the assertion that Biden is somehow losing those voter groups. Ridiculous in the extreme. Imagine you were the chief marketing exec for a consumer product company. Your basic product was purchased by 175 million Americans. You had to decide if the label on the product should be Blue or Red. You have a $500 million marketing budget to allocate across the US. Is there any version of reality in which you would poll just 128 Hispanic consumers and 108 Black consumers to decide how to target your advertising? If Nate Cohn was your pollster, he'd be fired and the Sienna polling org would be dropped...........................................
The NYTs should stop reporting their mini polling data as anything other than the view of 980 Americans, unrepresentative of voters as a whole.
The error bars for a sample of ~100 people should be around 10 percent (“back of the envelope” calculation).
And by the way, when a pollster asks a question about (old) age, the pollster is implanting the idea that chronological age is important – not a professional thing to do.
absolutely agree.. th3e poll was a setup so the Times could put out the headlines they did under the cover a quantitiative poll..Shameful!
Replacing Biden, the best president we've had since LBJ pre-Vietnam, based on results deliver would be a catastrophe. Entertainers like Ezra Klein or John Stewart or arrogant analysts like Nate Cohn, regardless of the size of their egos, do not get to "appoint" presidents. Voters do. The best revenge against the Biden nay-sayers is to elect Biden in 2024.
Here's some good stuff. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046
Are you saying that these so-called journalists just want to be heard?
Actually, what are they attempting to prove? They paid a company to poll what they wanted to say! Case closed. Polling is a science and not a journalism course!
Must be nice to these know it alls to live in their little bubbles and be so self assured about the world that you can dictate what’s good for the rest of us schlubs. There’s a whole world of hurting people out there but the NYT and others in my view knowingly trash the president for their own greedy advantage. The results of their selective poll was broadcast all over corporate media yesterday by talking heads as a simple dictate of the mighty news pompous intelligentsia. So appallingly lazy and self congratulatory.
Robert, I don’t know how many times you have stated that polls, especially the ones taken early, are to be ignored. I never look at them because they are always skewed mostly because their sample questions are terrible and their sample size is not big enough. I really think you’ve made your point about them enough. Just my opinion.
NYT just does not want to give Biden any leeway. I also think readership has decreased to the point that the editors obsess over whether the titles to their stories will cause enough mayhem to bring them revenue. All I know is that Trump had a very pathetic showing in tonight’s primary and I couldn’t be happier. It won’t last, of course, but it was nice.
Tomorrow is Scotus Time. Let’s see if they screw Trump or us. I will put some cents towards US!
Glad you have embraced the mantra of “ignore the polls.“ What should I do with a couple hundred people who wrote me over the weekend in a panic?
What you have been doing. If it were me, I would have a brief boilerplate answer pointing them to an analysis you’re preparing for your next newsletter.
I found your brief summary of the poll’s flaws to be full of talking points. Thank you!
“Ignore the Polls” is good advice because so many of them are poorly constructed, because, at best, a single poll “measures” only a point in time, etc.
However, in another dimension, the polls should not be entirely ignored: many people pay attention – a political fact. In that regard, “ignore the polls” is a bit like saying, “Ignore Trump’s rants” because the rants lack solid content. Unfortunately, they have political significance.
Ignore the early polls! Like the ones a year or 2 years in advance. They do nothing but fuel an imaginary fire.
Trying to reason with those few hundred is like pulling teeth, I imagine. If you can present statistics, factual evidence to them that shows polls, especially early ones, are not a viable tool, then maybe you will win a few over. As the saying goes “ You can please people all of the time…”
I dropped my subscription to the NY times and I get a daily "re-subscribe for $50 for first year". This is supposedly a limited time offer, but I think it has been close to a year since I dropped it. I get far more value from being a paid subcriber to several substacks like Robert's.
Hey Marlene, here we go again. A short while ago, Fern McBride posted an editorial by Nicholas Kristoff on Heather's post of tonight. As a followup to our previous discussion, this might be of interest to you. It's a readable share.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/opinion/israel-gaza-double-standard.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aE0.yFZK.Kv0VxNTBKIQ8&smid=url-share
I love Kristoff, but he missed one double standard: There is virtually no repotting on how Hamas continues to expose Gazans to death and injury by still embedding its fighters in civilian areas and continuing to hold hostages. Nor have I seen any reporting, at any time, pointing out that Hamas constructed 450 miles of tunnels in a territory only 25 miles long, but set none of them, none at all, aside as civilian air raid shelters. I don’t mean that as a comment on what Israel has been doing—which may well be committing suicide—but it would be nice to see just a little perspective.
Thanks for posting this link.
I am late in replying, RR, but thanks for reposting what Fern sent. The US cannot hide from the fact that we have caused conflicts in our lifetime. The two Bushes put us in Iraq and Afghanistan but before that, we were in Vietnam. I will never condone what Netanyahu is doing and has done…never! At least Joe is sending a ship of food and medicine to be distributed to the Palestinian people. I am not encouraged that Bibi will permit a ceasefire because now he’s demolishing Rafah. It is all very frightening.
If you really want to get worked up, read Smedley Butler, the long ago Comandant of the USMC. He led all the US colonial invations since the Spanish-American war and spilled the beans after he retired in the mid-1930s. "War is a Racket" is one early book of is. He foiled a Nazi coup attempt in the mid 1930s, before the next one in 1939, detailed by Rachel Maddow in her podcast "Ultra".
Nazis are alive and well today, in our country, bideing their time for the next one, which looks like it's on right now. Bibi is another Likud fascist collaborator. Likud was hooked up with Mussolinni in the 1930s. Bibi needs the war with Hamas to stay out of jail, like someone else we are dealing with. More later, sleep tight. Send me a message if something comes up to discuss.
I think you’re missing a critical point. The NYT is reporting on a poll that was taken and what the interpretation of that data was by a pollster. This is somewhat news worthy but what is always missing in a deep dive about the “ mechanic’s” of the poll and its validity and the confidence if it’s a fair sample of voter opinion.
I have not been upset by the poll, because I deleted it after reading the headline. I do not trust the NYT coverage of this election, and honestly, it has impacted the way I look at every topic they cover now. I read yesterday a discussion of an in house debate at the NYT on a piece covering Hamas weaponizing sexual violence, which was leaked to The Intercept. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/new-york-times-israel-gaza-leak
This is the concern I have about the NYT at this point. They are not up to coverage of the big issues of the day. This election is the most important in our lifetimes, for the USA and the planet. The NYT is not covering it with the appropriate urgency. I feel like the Russian bots have taken over at the Times.
I saw the Times poll headline and didn't bother to read. I knew you'd have a great takedown of it, Mr. Hubbell, so I waited. Thank you, again. The NYT has gone off the rails. What a shame. Now when people say you can't believe MSM, which I've always deplored, I can't help but think of the Times. How's that for a twist?
Or as Trump used to say.."The FAKE New York Times" and "The FAILING New York Times"...
The Washington Post has become so disappointing that I finally cancelled my subscription which I had for many years. In spite of having an extreme distrust of social media, here I am on Substack ( yes, I am aware it is not social media).
Excellent!
Ever since The Great Polling Debacle of 2016 I ignore poll results and I urge others to do the same.
There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there are polls. Apologies to Samuel Clemens.
I have an MS in Statistics and one of the more interesting classes I took was "Survey Design and Analysis". I won't bore you with the geeky details, but one of the things that was covered was how easy it is to bias a survey (or poll) by how questions were worded. Another big topic was choosing the participants and the importance of having your sample be representative of your target population as a whole. I took this class in 2006 or 2007 and I have looked at polling and surveys with a totally different lens.
And for those of you who are not math geeks like me, a poll's "margin of error" is simply based on the sample size and a statistical formula and tells you zilch about the quality of the poll's construction, selection of recipients, or biases.
I also studied grad level statistics, and completely agree with you. These are things that the many of the so-called "analysts" don't understand, and thus do not know how to report a poll in a way that makes sense. I've written about this many times, but because so few people are ever taught about what polls are and how they are constructed, it it something that needs repetition over and over. I worry more about the misrepresentation of the polls by media than about the "polls" themselves.
I agree. I sometimes wonder if these columnists go looking for a poll that supports their pre-existing belief. Because they seriously leave their common sense behind.
1) Donald Trump is claiming credit for the Dobbs decision. (Truth)
2) Women are up in arms about the Dobbs decision and are showing it with their votes ever since the decision in the summer of 2022. (Truth).
3) Current NY times poll shows a huge swing TOWARDS Donald Trump amongst women (WTH?? That one sprains my brain!)
Designers and the implementers should be subjected to cross examination.
When I used to hear "big box" cases, the experts' always challenged the sample size.
Need to know the demographic of the sample, whether they have a track record re validity. If the subjects had a low validity coefficient,, the entire study is probably worthless.
Yup. In this one, the range of error would be larger than the entire sample size. Kind of fun to think about, actually, considering the NYT's tanking reputation for clarity and, well, truth.
Yeah, this "poll" has several brain-twisters like that, as Robert pointed out. I tried to grasp how they could have come up with some of their conclusions, but it made my head hurt, so I quit.
Here's a take on surveys - at least from my "representative, Burgess Owens "Your Pro-Life Champion in Congress". When I and my neighbors’ friends answered Burgess Owen's 1/18/24 "pro-life" survey - "NO" gives an ERROR (over and over); I suppose “YES" doesn’t but I didn’t want to try. Burgess can claim that 100% of his district voted pro-life on his survey. His webpage states all the ways he is “pro life”. There was no link to the survey on webpage and a phone call to Burgess' (former football player) office goes no where. I even asked the investigative team at the newspaper in town to investigate. Will count all the "yeses" I suspect and will seem like "pro life" is Utah’s inclination.
As the neighbor who sent the survey to me stated " Many friends have the same problem [with the survey that only accepts a "YES" answer]. I guess that he doesn’t want to hear from those that don’t support him."
Original message from neighbor:
"Your chance to make it known that you are pro choice. Just check "no" that you do not support his pro life. Please forward to your friends."
From: "Rep. Burgess Owens" <repowens@mail8.housecommunications.gov>
Date: January 18, 2024 at 12:51:53 PM HST
Subject: Your Pro-Life Champion in Congress
Reply-To: repowens+newsletter@mail8.housecommunications.gov
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain apparently attributed the "lies" quote to Benjamin Disraeli.
Well I remember Twain publicizing the saying.
So of course I googled it.
Here is part of what Wikipedia said, didn’t find anything more definitive.
“ The phrase was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.[1] However, the phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death. Several other people have been listed as originators of the quote, and it is often attributed to Twain himself.[3]”
I came on to post the same thing. Moreover, I’ve been wondering if those supposedly pro Hillary poll results in 2016 didn’t act as a spur on the pro trump voters to work on behalf of their candidate and conversely act as a narcotic on pro Hillary voters to lull them into complacency. So seeing the NYT headline (didn’t read further), I wondered if it’ll have the same effect on 2024 voters and seeing confirmation of the stimulant reaction in the comments here. Now I can only hope that this will cause Trump voters to feel he’s winning so why bother to vote.
I am giving up on the NYT. Their reporting and polling is increasingly suspect. I don’t know what has happened over there but it isn’t good….
I just cancelled my subscription too
The DC primary should have been top of page 1.
DC has long been reliably “blue”. Don’t treat them as a bellwether.
Reason? Quality of hired employees. They are merely wanting a JOB not a career! They are not well educated and want to leave the office at 3:30 pm on Fridays! Lack expertise and loyalty, also. “How much vacation time do I have.” Easy in and joy ride out?
In addition to all that Robert says here about the recent NYT poll, consider this:
Only 823 potential voters nation-wide completed the full survey. If evenly distributed, that's 16.5 voters per state. If weighted by population, 98 respondents would represent all of California and 2 would represent all of Wyoming.
There were over 154 million voters in the 2020 election. A little basic arithmetic reveals that the survey questioned .0005 of 1% of the number of actual voters in 2020. It's absurd to suggest that some magic formula can correctly identify the demographic of any one person who accurately represents 187,000 others.
If even a half-dozen respondents are mis-identified, that represents a shift of over a million votes. This is nonsense.
.
Well done but my perspective if being behind in the “ polls” just makes us all want to work harder to win.
Yup.
@Jerry I see that Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) says that “several” House Republicans are willing to sign a discharge petition to force MAGA Mike to bring a national security supplemental measure to the floor for a vote. A simple majority can force a vote on a bill through a discharge petition, but such a measure is rare because it undermines the House speaker. With Johnson refusing to take up the Senate measure, Fitzpatrick and his colleague Representative Jared Golden (D-ME) have prepared their own pared-down aid measure. If you had anything to do with it, thanks. Hope it works.
Mike Johnson will not attempt any vote if his master in FL over rules it! Timid is as timid does! Johnson is nervous and useless in that position. He will be gone by years end. Thankfully? But it may be much worse??
Whole thing is questionable and definitely not believable! Move on . . .
Thank you for the take-down of the NYT/Siena poll and the other tidbits of our reality, Robert. I pasted a clip of your first example of that on Heather's tonight to refere so many of those wringing their hands over it to read what you had to say.
Safe trip home, and I'll look for you tomorrow.
I confess the NYT poll irritated me a lot. To work out frustration, so I could get back on a positive track, I wrote a sparky letter to the editor. Then I decided to submit it, even though I know it won't be published. (It will be read by someone. )
I offer it here for your amusement:
To the Editor:
Sunday’s article “Warning Lights Flash for Biden, Times Poll Finds” increases concerns about The New York Times’ age. At 172 years, it seems to struggle covering 21st century elections.
As the Times doubles down on polls with relatively small samples, taken many months before the election, some wonder whether it’s time to guide the publication – lovingly and respectfully – off the political centerstage. Relying on survey responses from those who answer a telephone, while failing to discuss impacts of polls’ margins of error, suggests a newspaper sadly out of touch.
Some saw warning signs in Times news coverage, which focuses on vintage horse-race reporting in an increasingly complex election landscape. Virtually ignoring grassroots political activists and downplaying support for Biden in Democratic voting, the paper over-emphasizes Trump’s primary wins and minimizes possible effects of his flame-throwing rhetoric and criminal indictments.
But polls are where the paper’s age really shows. And when predictions fall short, the Times acts forgetful and confused.
At the end of the next presidential term, the Times will be pushing 180. More and more readers may wonder if this newspaper is just too old to be an effective source of political news.
And excellent piece of satire, Mary. I appreciate good satire and thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Well done! It should be widely read and treated as an American treasure! Preserved in the LOC. I am not being facetious when I say that. It should be part of our recorded history.
You are kind! Writing it allowed me to work out frustration and see the poll for the joke that it is. Now. Back to work!!
Two days in a row upper right hand corner of the NYT the headline blasting out anti-Biden bias. I attempted to cancel before and will try again. They must be desperate to hold on to customers. I am embarrassed to have this on my doorstep.
It’s only value to me is that I recycle them to the SPCA where they shred them to line areas for dogs to shit on. Seems so fitting!
As much as I try to stay focused and involved in preserving democracy this is so defeating. How did we become a nation where a major newspaper has no shame about its bias. Years ago I couldn’t wait to read many of their columnists but now I have no respect for anyone associated with this rag and with other forms of corporate media.
I cancelled my subscription. It was easy to do online under Subscription and they just asked for a reason
i have to print out all the recipes I've saved there, then will cancel.
I've used another app, Paprika, for years and really like it. Yu might be able to access your saved NYT recipes and download them to Paprika
I have a free recipe app on my tablet called Cookmate that I downloaded from the GooglePlay store.
You can import recipes from websites by using the URL. I'm not sure how it would work from a recipe box on a website, but if it links to the original posts to each recipe in the Times, it might work.
I avoid saving the links- access can change. My fav way of saving recipes is as clips to EverNote. That way they are right on my desktop. That said, since I am not a NYT subscriber I may have missed some good ones. WaPo has some excellent recipes though, esp of the kinds of things I like to eat.
Keep trying. It took me 7 or 8 tries to quit smoking before I was successful. So now I don't smoke and don't support newspapers with a palatable agenda different from mine.
I cancelled my NY Times subscription yesterday and gave the reason that their reporting in general is biased against Biden and favored controversy for the sake of controversy. Specifically, the polling story was the last straw.
I cancelled my home delivery last month and am ready to cancel digital access after the latest survey and its treatment. I’m a PhD trained sociologist and found the survey and their interpretation of it to be shocking for a major newspaper. I agree with Robert’s comments about NYT bias. One additional concern is that whomever is monitoring their comments to a digital article is also biased. I offered a brief comment about telephone surveys and it was rejected at least five times yesterday…they never did agree to publish my comment in the comments section, which I find almost as troubling as their headlines and biased presentation of the survey. I used no angry words and was civil/professional in tone, but they rejected the comment about the limitations of telephone surveys in an era when the majority of Americans do NOT own a landline AND the majority of cellphone users report that they never answer their cell phones if the number is unknown. These facts are important when trying to interpret small telephone surveys. If you read closely, NYT authors do NOT mention that these are telephone surveys.
I took Robert’s advice from long ago and ignore the polls... the information about Hunter Biden and the fact that Robert slogged through lots of the testimony (239 Pages??) tells me Robert is super human and once again, the MSM has failed at every aspect of their jobs. Postcards, texts await... onward!
Robert, the NYT poll could have asked an analogous question regarding Trump to the NYT Biden question: "Is Biden just too old?". It would be: "Is Trump just too corrupt?".
A better Trump question might be "Is Trump too unstable?" Some Trump supporters accept his corruption as "sticking it to the man", and don't seem troubled by it. The ones who seem to be pulling away and thus reachable are the ones who see him as increasingly unstable. A responsible pollster would be taking this aspect into account and questioning it.
Good points. People who still support Trump are probably unpersuadable, however. If they have come this far in accepting him being a fraud, a criminal, a rapist, a bully, a racist, quoting the worst of Hitler, and his mob-boss-like total family's corruption, I don't think anything will change their minds. It is the people who haven't been paying attention that can still be persuaded and both his corruption and evident mental instability and decline will factor into their decision.
I vote for both of Justin’s questions.
The response to the second question could be revealing. And what about: “Is Trump too old?”
All Democratic candidates should congratulate spring '24 graduates, remind them to register, to vote and ask for volunteers. Gen Z can save us.
Gen Z can save us, and themselves as well. Fear our youth at the booth MAGAts!
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/opinion/democrats-governor-shapiro-beshear.html