June 28 (Reuters) - A group of U.S. voters who were unable to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump before Thursday’s presidential debate delivered their verdicts after the contest and it was almost universally bad news for Biden.
Of the 13 “undecideds” who spoke to Reuters, 10 described the 81-year-old Democratic president’s performance against Republican candidate Trump collectively as feeble, befuddled, embarrassing and difficult to watch.
And how, qualitatively, did these focus groups triangulate where undecided voters are on the issue of who to vote for?
Isn’t it quite probable they did exactly this? They certainly didn’t just pull these people off the streets. They had to aggregate undecided voters to begin with, after all.
I think it’s reaching for straws to suggest this isn’t saying what we already recognize from polling conducted in battleground states.
Then they need to state it, because the only data they’ve given is that they asked a group of 13 people, one group, which is still not an adequate sample. Period.
That, right there, is why focus groups shouldn’t be used for this to generalize a larger population, because the data is being misinterpreted to sell a biased story! Probability would be estimated if they actually conducted a full study. Which they clearly didn’t.
And you can’t use previously gathered data from battleground states to estimate results after an event. They’re snapshots of an opinion at that given time. You can’t use them for an event that occurred after the fact. Again, that’s unethical and inappropriate.
The data wasn’t good before, and it doesn’t take a statistician to know they’re going to be as-bad or worse than before post-debate. I’ll happily take that bet with you and circle back in the coming weeks as state-wide polling proves this.