We could take apart the ABC News/Washington Post poll over several newsletters, but for brevity and clarity, let’s go over some of the main issues.
I have participated in the ABC News/Washington Post Poll in the past, and one of the things that you need to understand first is that this is a random poll.
The polling company hired a call center and randomly called 1,006 Americans.
According to the poll’s methodology:
A dual frame landline and cell phone telephone sample was generated using Random Digit Dialing procedures by Survey Sampling International (SSI). Interviewers called landline and cellphone numbers, first requesting to speak with the youngest adult male or female at home. The final sample included 254 interviews completed on landlines and 752 interviews completed via cellphone, including 583 interviews with adults in cellphone-only households.
Here is how the poll is conducted.
A call center calls 1,000ish random Americans. The call center employee, who isn’t a pollster, but someone who may have been doing random calling for Xfinity or some other company or product an hour earlier, reads the questions. The respondent self-identifies as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
Since this isn’t a registered voter poll, the person asking the questions has no idea if the respondent is telling the truth.
Democrats can pretend to be Republicans, Republicans can pretend to be Democrats, and both can pretend to be Independents.
Do you see the problem?
There is no way to know if the data is valid.
There is no way to know if the person is a Democrat or a Republican or even telling the person asking the questions the truth.
Because of how they are conducted, polls like the ABC News/Washington Post Poll are especially susceptible to getting a faulty sample of respondents.
The Poll Results Suggest Something Is Not Right
The ABC News/Washington Post Poll is full of weird results. Most respondents think Trump should be charged with crimes, but they also support Trump over Biden 49%-42%, so these respondents want to put Trump in jail and elect him as president.
It doesn’t make sense.
Even though Biden and Trump are only a few years apart in age, respondents are worried about Biden’s fitness for office, but not Trump.
Given what has been documented about Trump’s historic levels of unpopularity and the fact that his presence caused Republicans to underperform in the midterm election, I suspect that the data sample is flawed through no fault of the polling company. Polls based on random samples like the ABC News/Washington Post Poll are notoriously volatile and inconsistent.
The Media Treats All Polls As Equal, And That Is A Problem
The media knows little about polling and doesn’t care to get educated. The press only wants a topline number that they can make a headline out of. It is disappointing that ABC News/Washington Post decided to run with a poll with many red flags.
The corporate media uses polls to validate their coverage and create their own news, which is why media companies should not be polling. An inherent conflict of interest leads companies to publish results that will generate the most headlines, which is what ABC News/Washington Post appears to have done.
Oh, Robert! What an IMPORTANT post!! Full disclosure: my sweet husband of 52 years passed peacefully surrounded by me and our two boys, so I am very very sensitive. Your post not only lifted me up, but I'm really really ready to fight the most important fight of our lives. Fired up and ready to go!! Thank you, again, and God bless!! xx's
Thank you Robert. A voice of reason, as always. I am a marketing guy by trade. To me it is simple. The Democrats have the political manpower to take over a significant segment of the public discourse if they just got off their asses and started to talk and make waves aimed directly at the public and the media. Shout louder, longer and unendingly. They give great speeches in congress but so what. Who’s listening? Go and grab the god damn headlines. When Trump first ran for President, he was brilliant in employing tactics based upon every third day or so whereby he made some outrageous statement that overwhelmed the media. It was completely programmed with no intent to ever stop doing it....and it worked terrifically. Hello???
Also, just as a side note/observation; it appears many Republicans misread to the Preamble to the Constitution. They believe it says “Me the people.....”, instead of “We the people....”
The 2024 Presidential election is almost exactly 18 months away. Robert Hubbell has boldly predicted a Democratic victory--and I think he will be proved right, perhaps spectacularly so. But for those who see all kinds of reasons why Democrats, including Joe Biden, might lose, I suggest they try this exercise: take the lengthy but not quite exhaustive list of problems Robert cites that Republicans face. Now imagine how things will look for the GOP after EITHER a hard-fought Republican primary season OR after Donald Trump has glided easily to the nomination. In either case a serious chunk of GOP voters will be unhappy. At the same time, Joe Biden--barring some serious health issue--will have a united party behind him AND a surprisingly strong economy to run on. It may have dipped into a very mild recession, but that will eliminate inflation as an issue. Even if unemployment goes from its present 3.6% to as high as double that--unlikely--consumer and business spending appears likely to remain strong. The Democrats just have to explain to the voters that the economy IS strong, as GOP lies are shown to be just that--lies. Nothing is of course guaranteed, but it is the Republicans who should be nervously chewing their finger nails, NOT us.
May 9, 2023·edited May 9, 2023Liked by Robert B. Hubbell
Maybe we could encourage Michelle Obama to update her incredible 2020 Commencement Address, focusing on encouraging HS grads to register themselves and their friends. Better yet, how about Michelle and Jill Biden teaming up for one?
Here's a selection of some of the many gaffes made by the former fake president that can be used in ads to warm up the presidential election season.
My favorite was his suggestion to the Covid-19 Task force that perhaps disinfectant could be injected as " a cleaning", perhaps because I have worked in medicine for 43 years and I saw this happen live. Such stupidity from the resident of the White House is simply shocking.
Highlight all of his lunacy. There's a lot of material available.
I believe it goes beyond Trump. The Republicans are creating voter suppression laws in red states. They are determined imprison liberal thinking, they prefer a government of a few authoritarians owned by corporations, they want a nation of Christians only - with their brand of Christianity, they want States rights only with the vision of red states across the country. They have been putting these plans into action for the last two decades by winning positions at the local level. There needs to be a major, as immediate as possible, shift in delivering the facts to the masses who don't read, don't watch or listen to anything but their propaganda programming.
I understand the difficulty of living without fear after trauma, but I think enough times has passed for us to put on our big boy and girl pants and to shoot a bird at the doomsayers. Pardon my crudity and mixed metaphors. We have nothing to fear. We have been here before.
Perhaps one reason some people fear a Biden loss in '24 is that they aren't willing to get involved in ensuring a victory. As you regularly point out, there are multiple ways of participating at all levels but the most important factor is action.
Call me paranoid, but I do wonder how much of the social media blather we see is generated and driven by Russian bots doing Putin's bidding. Especially when it comes to raising up Trump or his acolytes or tearing down Biden. There seems to be a whole lot of BS circulating in the nations news bloodstream.
For the most part, I agree with you regarding the polls. However, I am increasingly concerned by the renewed and growing ways in which Republican states are creating obstacles to voting. Will we be able to overcome these?
The Trump Beats Biden poll must be a Borowitz story. Like everything else these days, we're in Alice's land, and we think it must make sense. Don't attend the Tea Party. Watch the crazies, don't be one.
I admit that my mood changes with each new article that I read or poll that I hear about that isn’t good news for Democrats. It did occur to me that I wondered who was polled, and what was the question? I like what you said in regards to Trump’s mental instability. It is up to US to get that message out. Dems always allow the GQP to flood the zone and determine the narrative. We simply cannot allow that! They LIE with every breath. And the media will not challenge them. I listened to The War Room with James Carville yesterday, and really am motivated by what he said. He wants the Dems to go on the attack with truth and information about every issue the GQP introduces - including the debt ceiling, and all the culture wars. For example, he believes the Dems have not done a great job explaining in plain English what the deal is with the debt ceiling. He believes lots of Americans who are not informed will think to themselves that the GQP has presented a budget, and the President won’t sit down with them. In fact, we know the GQP wouldn’t know a budget if it it bit them in the butt. Call them out!!!! Explain that we have already purchased the items in the debt ceiling. This discussion is about PAYING our bill for those purchases. We can discuss how we want to spend money moving forward in another meeting! Keep it simple, stupid! Don’t let the GQP own the libs on this or any other topic. We should have rapid response teams who pound the GQP everytime they come out with some heinous bill - such as lowering the age for child labor!!!! Tell the American people what that is. It is NOT about parents’ rights. It is about profit and finding cheap labor by corporations! They’ve couched it in allowing families to send their young children to work since there are many job openings for the worst possible jobs. Call them out!!! How is this “protecting the children”, which the GQP pretends is their mantra. The same mantra that is belied by their refusal to do anything about gun violence. Go after them, and don’t let them own the narrative on all these hot-button issues that scare white Americans. Flood our own zone with concrete truths and call the GQP what it is: Cruel, hateful, racist, misogynistic, autocratic. All the things Robert listed in his newsletter today. I’m all about fighting. The Dems have played nice far too long. We are the good guys, and we have to protect our country at all costs…………….
It is no doubt that the 2024 elections will be pivotal for the future of our democracy. We need the best possible candidates for every office that will be filled next year. Not only federal and state house races but every local race including boards of education. We do not seem to have a bench of capable and electable democrats who are ready to step up as candidates. We lost great candidates like Tim Ryan in Ohio and Cheri Beasley in North Carolina in their senate races in 2020, when they lost to MAGA candidates. We need them back in the fray. Where are they and other note worthy and top notch democrats now?????
Peter Baker (a reporter, not a pollster) in today's New York Times gives away the sordid story, well below the fold:
"Critics of the poll disparaged it for including all adults in its sample of 1,006, rather than just registered voters, and maintained that its results among subgroups like young people, independents, Hispanics and Black Americans were simply not credible."
I've taught public health and epidemiology in major schools of public health. The poll described in main media depends on just over 1,000 sampled to provide statistical strength, but doesn't tell how many persons did not respond, that is how many calls were needed to get to the 1,006. Hugh bias there. Besides the final sample not being a true representation of the "universe" the poll then breaks down responses by a bunch of sub-samples. Each time you do that, the statistical confidence for any sub-sample widens by greater and greater margins because there are fewer and fewer respondents (Blacks, women, young, old). One sub-sample result, could, for example, theoretically range from a reported average of 40% from 30% to 50% or by even greater gaps, and thus invalif. "Simply not credible," and a failing grade to students of public health conducting such a survey.
IGNORE THE DAMN POLL!
From the PoliticusUSA Substack Newsletter:
We could take apart the ABC News/Washington Post poll over several newsletters, but for brevity and clarity, let’s go over some of the main issues.
I have participated in the ABC News/Washington Post Poll in the past, and one of the things that you need to understand first is that this is a random poll.
The polling company hired a call center and randomly called 1,006 Americans.
According to the poll’s methodology:
A dual frame landline and cell phone telephone sample was generated using Random Digit Dialing procedures by Survey Sampling International (SSI). Interviewers called landline and cellphone numbers, first requesting to speak with the youngest adult male or female at home. The final sample included 254 interviews completed on landlines and 752 interviews completed via cellphone, including 583 interviews with adults in cellphone-only households.
Here is how the poll is conducted.
A call center calls 1,000ish random Americans. The call center employee, who isn’t a pollster, but someone who may have been doing random calling for Xfinity or some other company or product an hour earlier, reads the questions. The respondent self-identifies as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
Since this isn’t a registered voter poll, the person asking the questions has no idea if the respondent is telling the truth.
Democrats can pretend to be Republicans, Republicans can pretend to be Democrats, and both can pretend to be Independents.
Do you see the problem?
There is no way to know if the data is valid.
There is no way to know if the person is a Democrat or a Republican or even telling the person asking the questions the truth.
Because of how they are conducted, polls like the ABC News/Washington Post Poll are especially susceptible to getting a faulty sample of respondents.
The Poll Results Suggest Something Is Not Right
The ABC News/Washington Post Poll is full of weird results. Most respondents think Trump should be charged with crimes, but they also support Trump over Biden 49%-42%, so these respondents want to put Trump in jail and elect him as president.
It doesn’t make sense.
Even though Biden and Trump are only a few years apart in age, respondents are worried about Biden’s fitness for office, but not Trump.
Given what has been documented about Trump’s historic levels of unpopularity and the fact that his presence caused Republicans to underperform in the midterm election, I suspect that the data sample is flawed through no fault of the polling company. Polls based on random samples like the ABC News/Washington Post Poll are notoriously volatile and inconsistent.
The Media Treats All Polls As Equal, And That Is A Problem
The media knows little about polling and doesn’t care to get educated. The press only wants a topline number that they can make a headline out of. It is disappointing that ABC News/Washington Post decided to run with a poll with many red flags.
The corporate media uses polls to validate their coverage and create their own news, which is why media companies should not be polling. An inherent conflict of interest leads companies to publish results that will generate the most headlines, which is what ABC News/Washington Post appears to have done.
Oh, Robert! What an IMPORTANT post!! Full disclosure: my sweet husband of 52 years passed peacefully surrounded by me and our two boys, so I am very very sensitive. Your post not only lifted me up, but I'm really really ready to fight the most important fight of our lives. Fired up and ready to go!! Thank you, again, and God bless!! xx's
If you want:
Reasonable gun control
Reproductive rights
Voting rights
Election integrity
Judicial ethics
Family values
Healthcare
Educational freedom
Social equality
Democracy for your grandchildren
Sustainable and renewable energy
Climate that we can live with
Vote Democrat!
Thank you Robert. A voice of reason, as always. I am a marketing guy by trade. To me it is simple. The Democrats have the political manpower to take over a significant segment of the public discourse if they just got off their asses and started to talk and make waves aimed directly at the public and the media. Shout louder, longer and unendingly. They give great speeches in congress but so what. Who’s listening? Go and grab the god damn headlines. When Trump first ran for President, he was brilliant in employing tactics based upon every third day or so whereby he made some outrageous statement that overwhelmed the media. It was completely programmed with no intent to ever stop doing it....and it worked terrifically. Hello???
Also, just as a side note/observation; it appears many Republicans misread to the Preamble to the Constitution. They believe it says “Me the people.....”, instead of “We the people....”
The 2024 Presidential election is almost exactly 18 months away. Robert Hubbell has boldly predicted a Democratic victory--and I think he will be proved right, perhaps spectacularly so. But for those who see all kinds of reasons why Democrats, including Joe Biden, might lose, I suggest they try this exercise: take the lengthy but not quite exhaustive list of problems Robert cites that Republicans face. Now imagine how things will look for the GOP after EITHER a hard-fought Republican primary season OR after Donald Trump has glided easily to the nomination. In either case a serious chunk of GOP voters will be unhappy. At the same time, Joe Biden--barring some serious health issue--will have a united party behind him AND a surprisingly strong economy to run on. It may have dipped into a very mild recession, but that will eliminate inflation as an issue. Even if unemployment goes from its present 3.6% to as high as double that--unlikely--consumer and business spending appears likely to remain strong. The Democrats just have to explain to the voters that the economy IS strong, as GOP lies are shown to be just that--lies. Nothing is of course guaranteed, but it is the Republicans who should be nervously chewing their finger nails, NOT us.
Maybe we could encourage Michelle Obama to update her incredible 2020 Commencement Address, focusing on encouraging HS grads to register themselves and their friends. Better yet, how about Michelle and Jill Biden teaming up for one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXDTmAYsFxQ
Here's a selection of some of the many gaffes made by the former fake president that can be used in ads to warm up the presidential election season.
My favorite was his suggestion to the Covid-19 Task force that perhaps disinfectant could be injected as " a cleaning", perhaps because I have worked in medicine for 43 years and I saw this happen live. Such stupidity from the resident of the White House is simply shocking.
Highlight all of his lunacy. There's a lot of material available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MyLwAokINc
I believe it goes beyond Trump. The Republicans are creating voter suppression laws in red states. They are determined imprison liberal thinking, they prefer a government of a few authoritarians owned by corporations, they want a nation of Christians only - with their brand of Christianity, they want States rights only with the vision of red states across the country. They have been putting these plans into action for the last two decades by winning positions at the local level. There needs to be a major, as immediate as possible, shift in delivering the facts to the masses who don't read, don't watch or listen to anything but their propaganda programming.
I understand the difficulty of living without fear after trauma, but I think enough times has passed for us to put on our big boy and girl pants and to shoot a bird at the doomsayers. Pardon my crudity and mixed metaphors. We have nothing to fear. We have been here before.
Robert, thank you for your consistency and hope.
Perhaps one reason some people fear a Biden loss in '24 is that they aren't willing to get involved in ensuring a victory. As you regularly point out, there are multiple ways of participating at all levels but the most important factor is action.
Call me paranoid, but I do wonder how much of the social media blather we see is generated and driven by Russian bots doing Putin's bidding. Especially when it comes to raising up Trump or his acolytes or tearing down Biden. There seems to be a whole lot of BS circulating in the nations news bloodstream.
For the most part, I agree with you regarding the polls. However, I am increasingly concerned by the renewed and growing ways in which Republican states are creating obstacles to voting. Will we be able to overcome these?
The Trump Beats Biden poll must be a Borowitz story. Like everything else these days, we're in Alice's land, and we think it must make sense. Don't attend the Tea Party. Watch the crazies, don't be one.
I admit that my mood changes with each new article that I read or poll that I hear about that isn’t good news for Democrats. It did occur to me that I wondered who was polled, and what was the question? I like what you said in regards to Trump’s mental instability. It is up to US to get that message out. Dems always allow the GQP to flood the zone and determine the narrative. We simply cannot allow that! They LIE with every breath. And the media will not challenge them. I listened to The War Room with James Carville yesterday, and really am motivated by what he said. He wants the Dems to go on the attack with truth and information about every issue the GQP introduces - including the debt ceiling, and all the culture wars. For example, he believes the Dems have not done a great job explaining in plain English what the deal is with the debt ceiling. He believes lots of Americans who are not informed will think to themselves that the GQP has presented a budget, and the President won’t sit down with them. In fact, we know the GQP wouldn’t know a budget if it it bit them in the butt. Call them out!!!! Explain that we have already purchased the items in the debt ceiling. This discussion is about PAYING our bill for those purchases. We can discuss how we want to spend money moving forward in another meeting! Keep it simple, stupid! Don’t let the GQP own the libs on this or any other topic. We should have rapid response teams who pound the GQP everytime they come out with some heinous bill - such as lowering the age for child labor!!!! Tell the American people what that is. It is NOT about parents’ rights. It is about profit and finding cheap labor by corporations! They’ve couched it in allowing families to send their young children to work since there are many job openings for the worst possible jobs. Call them out!!! How is this “protecting the children”, which the GQP pretends is their mantra. The same mantra that is belied by their refusal to do anything about gun violence. Go after them, and don’t let them own the narrative on all these hot-button issues that scare white Americans. Flood our own zone with concrete truths and call the GQP what it is: Cruel, hateful, racist, misogynistic, autocratic. All the things Robert listed in his newsletter today. I’m all about fighting. The Dems have played nice far too long. We are the good guys, and we have to protect our country at all costs…………….
It is no doubt that the 2024 elections will be pivotal for the future of our democracy. We need the best possible candidates for every office that will be filled next year. Not only federal and state house races but every local race including boards of education. We do not seem to have a bench of capable and electable democrats who are ready to step up as candidates. We lost great candidates like Tim Ryan in Ohio and Cheri Beasley in North Carolina in their senate races in 2020, when they lost to MAGA candidates. We need them back in the fray. Where are they and other note worthy and top notch democrats now?????
Peter Baker (a reporter, not a pollster) in today's New York Times gives away the sordid story, well below the fold:
"Critics of the poll disparaged it for including all adults in its sample of 1,006, rather than just registered voters, and maintained that its results among subgroups like young people, independents, Hispanics and Black Americans were simply not credible."
I've taught public health and epidemiology in major schools of public health. The poll described in main media depends on just over 1,000 sampled to provide statistical strength, but doesn't tell how many persons did not respond, that is how many calls were needed to get to the 1,006. Hugh bias there. Besides the final sample not being a true representation of the "universe" the poll then breaks down responses by a bunch of sub-samples. Each time you do that, the statistical confidence for any sub-sample widens by greater and greater margins because there are fewer and fewer respondents (Blacks, women, young, old). One sub-sample result, could, for example, theoretically range from a reported average of 40% from 30% to 50% or by even greater gaps, and thus invalif. "Simply not credible," and a failing grade to students of public health conducting such a survey.