If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?

Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.

The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.

  • MetalJewSolid
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    1 year ago

    I participated in a few polls in 2020 and…yeah. I would pick them up because I was waiting for important calls. Why tf else would I pick up. I still get these calls sometimes, usually while waiting for a call back for a job.

        • semi_sentient@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Every time I get a call from an unknown number I let it stop ringing and immediately add it to the block list. I imagine I can’t be the only one that does this.

          • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Being on the job hunt is miserable. Is it a scammer? Is it a bill collector? Is it the job I applied to? They all start the conversation by asking me who I am instead of telling me who they are (you know, the normal thing you do when you are the initiator of the call), so if I pop off on them thinking it’s the bill collector for the 3rd time today with a different number, and it’s the job, I’ve lost myself the opportunity.

    • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I was waiting to hear back about a job then and answered a poll call about gambling. I very, very rarely gamble. And when I do it’s like $50 on blackjack or something cuz my friends want to go to the casino here. That was a fun call cuz my answers were like “never”, *rarely", “no”. Lol

      Dunno why I felt the need to share. I’m still drunk from my friends birthday party last night I think lol

      • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        I’ve answered a poll about food security once when I was in Belgium. They were asking if goes many mean I’d skipped in the last month, if hunger was affecting my studies or work, if u was able to have vegetables or fruits in my diet …

        I answered until the end because it just felt sad, I’m privileged and don’t have to worry about these issues but I wanted people working on the issue to have all the support needed.