2024 presidential election polls / odds, round ~3

The threads around this topic keep getting closed for members making political statements. As such maybe I shouldn't be trying to start a new one, but I did ask the Wizard if he'd be amenable to opening one of the threads that was closed months ago, and he never replied. However, if the Wiz or admins think this new thread should be closed or even deleted, I'll understand.

I made a new page to track who's ahead in the electoral college based on current polling, along with the margin in each state. As you can see, the margins in the swing states are *tiny*. I'm working on automating the data updating.

Since I've been watching this all pretty closely, here's where I think the media got it wrong:

(1) There are lots of articles about who's winning the popular vote, as though that matters. U.S. presidents aren't decided by the popular vote. These articles shouldn't even exist, and if they do, they should at least state right near the top that the popular vote is irrelevant in picking the president. Instead, that information is usually omitted completely, and if they do include it it's near the bottom, and not clearly/strongly worded.

(2) The media reports every individual new poll as though it matters. In reality a single poll is pretty meaningless. Responsible reporting would put it into context, listing the average of *all* recent polls, and again, near the top. Rarely if ever happens.

(3) The media has been overstating Harris' lead. Yes, she's winning a majority of swing states, but the margins are tiny, looking at an average of polls. Four states have a margin of <1% point, two more have margins of <1.5% points, and two more have margins of 3 and 3.8% points. I think I read that the margin of error is 5 points, so this means that the reality is that the election is still anyone's game.

(4) They media never mentions the error in 2020 polling. Last time around, they had two states right on the money (0.01 and 0.04 points off), and two more at <0.76 its off, but they were off by a whopping *6* points in Wisconsin.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

The threads around this topic keep getting closed for members making political statements. As such maybe I shouldn't be trying to start a new one, but I did ask the Wizard if he'd be amenable to opening one of the threads that was closed months ago, and he never replied. However, if the Wiz or admins think this new thread should be closed or even deleted, I'll understand.

I made a new page to track who's ahead in the electoral college based on current polling, along with the margin in each state. As you can see, the margins in the swing states are *tiny*. I'm working on automating the data updating.

Since I've been watching this all pretty closely, here's where I think the media got it wrong:

(1) There are lots of articles about who's winning the popular vote, as though that matters. U.S. presidents aren't decided by the popular vote. These articles shouldn't even exist, and if they do, they should at least state right near the top that the popular vote is irrelevant in picking the president. Instead, that information is usually omitted completely, and if they do include it it's near the bottom, and not clearly/strongly worded.

(2) The media reports every individual new poll as though it matters. In reality a single poll is pretty meaningless. Responsible reporting would put it into context, listing the average of *all* recent polls, and again, near the top. Rarely if ever happens.

(3) The media has been overstating Harris' lead. Yes, she's winning a majority of swing states, but the margins are tiny, looking at an average of polls. Four states have a margin of <1% point, two more have margins of <1.5% points, and two more have margins of 3 and 3.8% points. I think I read that the margin of error is 5 points, so this means that the reality is that the election is still anyone's game.

(4) They media never mentions the error in 2020 polling. Last time around, they had two states right on the money (0.01 and 0.04 points off), and two more at <0.76 its off, but they were off by a whopping *6* points in Wisconsin.
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I feel like I could have written the same post! (Just not as well as you did…)
I clicked on your link and it only had around half of the states.

I am closing this thread.

I remind everyone that discussion about politics is against the rules of this forum and unless an administrator has explicitly given approval you cannot start a thread about politics.