Post by Sibboleth on Oct 30, 2016 16:46:03 GMT
I'm not sure how well known this is so it makes sense to highlight the issue in a separate thread.
The quality of statewide polling in the USA has pretty much collapsed entirely over the past decade. It used to be the case that large numbers were carried out by comparatively reputable national firms and there were also a decent number of firms that specialised in producing state polls of a decent quality (often they were only active in a few states). The collapse in advertising revenues in the regional American media has pretty much spelled the end of the first sort of state poll (the outlets that used to commission them can't afford them now and in some cases don't even exist) and have largely eliminated the second as well. And as changing telecommunications usage patterns have wrecked utterly the polling models of those regional firms it isn't as if if they were producing as many polls as they used to they'd be of any use. So where we once had a wealth of solid polling information for the states now...
...well most state polls fall into two categories, neither of which are any good. University polls (an American institution and a very bad one) and polls done by dodgy local comms/marketing firms. Most of these are not worth the PDFs they're published on.
That's not to say that state polling should be ignored entirely (what we have is all we have so...) but that please please please don't ever treat it as Fact.
The quality of statewide polling in the USA has pretty much collapsed entirely over the past decade. It used to be the case that large numbers were carried out by comparatively reputable national firms and there were also a decent number of firms that specialised in producing state polls of a decent quality (often they were only active in a few states). The collapse in advertising revenues in the regional American media has pretty much spelled the end of the first sort of state poll (the outlets that used to commission them can't afford them now and in some cases don't even exist) and have largely eliminated the second as well. And as changing telecommunications usage patterns have wrecked utterly the polling models of those regional firms it isn't as if if they were producing as many polls as they used to they'd be of any use. So where we once had a wealth of solid polling information for the states now...
...well most state polls fall into two categories, neither of which are any good. University polls (an American institution and a very bad one) and polls done by dodgy local comms/marketing firms. Most of these are not worth the PDFs they're published on.
That's not to say that state polling should be ignored entirely (what we have is all we have so...) but that please please please don't ever treat it as Fact.
