[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

I am deploring the reflexive rejection of evidence

No one is reflexively rejecting anything. You are ignoring thousands of posts and articles posted on FR from the last election proving how biased and unreliable the polls are.

[nathanbedford]

That’s not to say there aren’t reasons for concern. National polls were pretty good in the 2016 presidential election, but state-level polling was fairly poor (although still within the “normal” range of accuracy). Polls of the 2016 presidential primaries were sometimes way off the mark. And in many recent elections, the polls were statistically biased in one direction or another — there was a statistical bias toward Democrats in 2016, for instance.

I refer you to my reply #77 citing article by Nate Silver. On a previous thread I pointed out the polls that are national rather than state focused are virtually useless; polls that are this far out from an election are not of much use; polls that question, voters instead of likely voters are of little utility. That said, there is no logical reason to believe that, even if the polls were wrong in 2016-a very debatable point- that that means they will be wrong in 2020. Every election is sui generis. Common sense tells us that this one might very well be very different.

Although Trump enjoys the advantages of incumbency, he is facing an unremitting unrelenting attack from the media, from his Democrat adversaries in Congress, from the DOJ, FBI and the rest of the Deep State with very little support from his own Republicans. Worse, his best argument, a wonderful economy, is in shambles as is the rule of law across the nation.

Common sense tells us that the polls today are very, very bad. They might be fraudulent, they might be premature, or they might not. Their trend in recent days has been very negative, in other words, the trend is not our friend.

Are we to ignore a threat reflexively or are we to take it seriously and adjust?

The most dangerous human tendency in war or politics, even worse than fighting the last war or projecting from last cycle's polls, is to believe your own press and to underestimate the enemy. We are in a new cycle perhaps not seen since 1860 and polling is telling us that we do not understand it; we certainly do not know how to get control of it or even how we get ahead of it.

What we are doing is not working. There is no evidence that supports optimism toward a positive election. In order to survive we have to accept that those threats are probably true and their truth (or or even, likelihood) means that we have to change course.

We will not change course if we believe that all is well because 4 years ago polls were arguably inaccurate. Many experts say they were not.

I would rather be regretting my pessimism on election morning than rueing my optimism. Act now, now is not too late. Dismiss this threat and it soon will be too late.