I mean, really?

I may have to reconsider my subscription to the Washington Post

Yes, that was the headline which sent the DC political press into orgiastic revelry. Finally, Trump is back in the game! He's leading Biden! And Americans are pissed off at the prospect of these two old fossils going at it again! They'll tune in and read and be angry and we'll get our engagement!

Here is the topline of the poll in question:

Now, let's preface this with this salient fact: This is a poll of 895 Americans. Eight hundred ninety-five. From this, we're supposed to accept that it accurately reflects the views of two hundred million voters. 

The "science" of polling has always been dubious. But nothing, absolutely nothing, which has occurred in that industry since 2015 should give anyone any confidence that their arcane scrying can scrupulously discern the will of the American voter. Even in 2020, when polling showed Joe Biden romping to an electoral college landslide, it turned out to be a mirror of the 2016 results, decided again by a few thousand votes in key states. 

But let's look at this.

First off, the poll shows Donald Trump winning  18-39 year olds by nine points. The same group which just a few months ago voted against Republicans. I know, polling, but if the Washington Post and ABC are going to come up with this, perhaps they should look at this from CNN:

Do you see what I see? The 18-39 group voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. And, also, this has a sample of over 18,000 respondents. Yet I'm supposed to believe that this age group, in four months, has done a complete 180 and now favors Trump. 

But wait, there's more!

Voters 65 and older went for Republicans in the midterms by 12 points. And yet in the WaPo/ABC poll, Pres. Biden wins them by five points. 

So, to recap: people 18-39 turned much more conservative, and the 65+ cohort became much more liberal in [checks watch] not even three months. 

It's quite obvious what's going on.

There's a better than even chance that Joe Biden, due to incumbency, due to the newly-elected GOP House showing all its ass, due to the economic good news, due to the international leadership of the US, etc., etc., will win re-election handily. Oh, there will be hiccups, but it will be mostly drama-free. This... is boring. This isn't exciting. This won't have the suckers the esteemed American voter tuning into their programs, or reading their websites. This will impact revenues. This will force them to explain actual policy.

So. Crank out a poll! A poll of less than 900 people! A poll showing that dammit it will be exciting! Everything is up in the air! Democrats will jettison both Pres. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—whom none in the political press seem to have any understanding of what she's doing or where she is. It'll be 2016 all over again!

Cable media has been in freefall since 2021 and Trump was packed off to Mar-a-Lago. Try as they might, they just can't gin up enough fear and anxiety. People aren't tuning in. Books aren't being bought. Summer in the Hamptons is being threatened. The viewer and reader must be cajoled into watching. Competent governance doesn't bring in the eyeballs. Fear does. We saw this with the pullout from Afghanistan. We saw that just last week with the Chinese balloon. 

I saw a comment last week that if CNN realized that its natural audience consisted of the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden it would dominate the airwaves. Before Fox News came along CNN was just that trusted source of news. Since then it has tacked to the right to take the Fox audience. The same can be said of all mainstream media. Its natural audience is us. Those of us who voted for Democrats in 2020 and 2022. But they don't sell to us. We're not fearful enough. We talk back when they put out bullshit like this. We don't just sit slack-jawed and ingest whatever they give us. We have critical thought. And critical thought doesn't sell Viagra.

We have been conditioned to accept polling as holy writ. But that ship has sailed. Any poll has to be examined for outrageous data. Young people voting GOP, and older Americans for Democrats? Anyone supposedly on our side who takes polling like this in any way seriously—looking at you, Julian Castro—should do us all a favor and go away. Not only are they no help, but they're working against Democratic interests. Modern polling is at best unreliable, and at worst actively pernicious. And the likes of Nate Silver and Real Clear Politics aggregate these polls and treat them all the same, quality be damned.

Polling claims to peer into the future. Like astrologists, they're taking us for marks. It's time to stop it.

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