• rekorse@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I understand the point but people are trying to change “more accurate than a gut feeling” to “the best predictive tools we have”, which betrays how accurate they are.

    I’m not sure anyone here would defend the methodology of these polls but they keep referencing them constantly.

    I understand we have nothing else, but maybe we just can’t predict the future as well as we think we can.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      “the best predictive tools we have”, which betrays how accurate they are.

      I understand we have nothing else

      Yes, we don’t have anything better, so they literally are the best predictive tools we have. It’s just that all our tools suck. If you see someone say “Florida is now a Harris state based on a couple of rallies I’ve seen” it’s more than fair to counter with “polls show Trump has a sizeable lead there”, particularly when you compare with polls run the same way in other states and use it as a rough relative indicator of Trump v. Harris bias between states, even if the absolute values are likely to mismatch the result.