Please tell your family, your friends, your co-workers, everyone: Polls are useless, just vote, because the polling booth is the only poll that counts!
Most of the polls are nothing more than psychological operations. They are put out to play with your mind.
But, but, but Romney lost in 2012!
The nationwide polls take polling data from individual counties in swing states and probable red/blue states and extrapolate those results to give an accurate forecast of who will win what electoral votes.
They don’t just call 10k people randomly around the country and ask “Who are you voting for?” Then say the country is voting this way or that way. That’s not how polling works.
I’m of the opinion that the fog of war will settle over the national scene as we approach election day, with such a withering barrage of BS flying from every direction that no one will know for sure what’s going on.
There will be countless polls, most bogus, a few real. There will be countless wild accusations, a new one ever hour or even every few minutes.
There will be all kinds of rumors too, about wars, and internet outages, and campaign dirty tricks, violence and planned violence, murders, you name it.
The thing to do is vote. Turn off the M$M and just vote.
For the jackasses in the media that are all saying that it is over, is both stupid and ridiculous.
There's nothing fictional about "margin of error". It's a real metric, based on the sample size and the total population.
But, in order for it to be correct, the sample has to be representative of the total population, and drawn randomly from the population. This is where polls fall short.
First, you don't even know what comprises the total population. Only about 6 out of 10 eligible voters actually vote, and you have to choose your sample from the voting population, excluding the non-voters.
Second: even if you could identify the voting population, it's difficult to sample them. Most refuse to participate. And, you have no way to determine if a participant is telling you the truth.
Third: our elections are easily manipulated. There is some dispute about how bad the problem is, but it's definitely more than zero. Over the years, there have been elections that were definitely stolen, but no one wants to admit that we missed some that couldn't be conclusively proven.
Your conclusion is basically correct: the polls shouldn't be believed. The pollsters pretend they are applying some kind of statistical methodology, but it's all snake oil.
If they get it right, it's a lucky accident.
The most trustable polls are the internal polls. However I do not think Trump is conducting internal polls is he?
To Hell with Big Media.
To Hell with the Polls.
Get out and vote for Trump/Pence ... get your friends, neighbors and families do so as well.
Personally, I trust the “Margin of Error” for most polls to be more like plus or minus 30%.
Not to worry.
I haven’t trusted polls since the 1980s when I worked in the ‘industry’ and quit in disgust at how crooked it is.
I learned from my bosses a hundred ways to make a poll give the results that the client wants to hear, but only an expert looking at the entire poll design, including the tone of voice used by the poll takers on every question asked would be able to tell whether it is an honest poll.
Notice who actually owns the polling companies. Sundance has been breaking them down and finding they’re owned by pro Hillary dem operatives.
That puts the very foundation into question.