Bill Maher asks about the "fact" that 84% of "gays" "stuck with the Democrats," and Andrew Sullivan doesn't agree with the assertion of fact.

Sullivan: "We don't really know how gays vote.... That's how GLBTQIA+ people vote.... The vast majority — 40% of that — are bisexual women, many of whom are in relationships with straight guys. So we don't know. I'm sure it was a big majority. I'm not sure including a big bunch of of of young women in that will distort it somewhat. I wish we could have polling of gay men and lesbians. Why can't we? Why are we now forced into this bleh?"

I'm using the letters b-l-e-h to represent a Sullivan vocalization that seemed to express the opinion that the GLBTQIA+ grouping is annoyingly large and indistinct. He seems to think gay men and lesbians should be polled as a distinct group and that their opinion is more meaningful than the amorphous grouping that sweeps in the many young woman who call themselves bisexual and may very well be living the most privileged sort of life. Of course these women tend to vote Democratic, but did gay men continue to vote Democratic? Sullivan groups gay men and lesbians together, but why not demand separate polling there too. There is an important difference in the voting of men and women, and why wouldn't that difference also show up among gay people?

ADDED: Tim Dillon says that trans people ought to identify as Republicans:

"Mr. Trump beat his polling numbers by about 2.5 points nationally... and 2.1 points in the average swing state."

"Our final forecast had it so close to 50-50 that the outcome was literally more random than a coin flip. (Empirically, heads win 50.5 percent of the time.) But a Trump sweep of the swing states was our single most likely outcome, because polling errors tend to be correlated. It’s not great that the polls missed low on Mr. Trump for the third and final time, even in a year when survey companies adopted all sorts of novel strategies to avoid this exact outcome."

Writes Nate Silver, in "Don’t Blame Polling" (NYT).

I'm blaming polling. What's Silver's reason not to blame polling? First, Republicans are (supposedly) more suspicious and less likely to respond to polls. Pollsters using "weighting" to try to compensate. There's also "herding," which is massaging the numbers to make them more like other pollsters' numbers, but herding isn't a basis for not blaming polling, and Silver is certain that herding occurred in 2024. So what justifies that headline? I see this:

Should we trust polls less? I’ll offer a brave and qualified no, but only because the shift in public sentiment about polls — from viewing them as oracular to seeing them as fake news — has probably overcorrected relative to reality....

Blaming and not trusting are 2 different things! But that's an issue with the headline writer. Silver is talking about trust, and he's only saying don't trust polls any less that you already do. I guess it's like the way I feel about reading the mainstream news, which I do every day. I don't consider it a complete waste of time. I regard it as biased and manipulative, but the alternatives are even worse. (And this blog is not an alternative to MSM. It feeds off MSM.)

"You know how polls are done. Oh, I'm gonna get myself in trouble, but, so I really don't believe too much in 'em...."

"These pollsters, they charge you a lot of money... half a million bucks to do some stupid poll. They interview like 251 people. I don't think they interview 'em in many cases.... I think they sit there, they make a deal, they get a half a million bucks and they say, Trump's leading 51 to 49. They announce it and everybody says, oh oh.... I think that they probably don't always poll. Some of them probably never poll.... I don't know of one person in my whole life that ever got called by a pollster...."

Said Donald Trump, talking to Joe Rogan the other day.

"But I shouldn't say that 'cause I'm doing very, you know, really well in the polls..... But no, I honestly believe that there's probably a lot of fraud. I had a poll Washington Post/ABC in the Hillary thing on Wisconsin. They had me down 17 points the day before the election. I knew it was wrong because I had a rally. I had 29,000 people at a racetrack. And it was like zero degrees. Wisconsin.

"So OK," Nathan Silver will "tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats."

Quoted in "Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election. But Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine" (NYT).

Silver intuits that the polls reflect a "nonresponse bias": "It’s not that Trump voters are lying to pollsters; it’s that in 2016 and 2020, pollsters weren’t reaching enough of them."

Trump voters are more about liking Trump, not disliking Biden, and Biden voter are more about disliking Trump, not liking Biden.

From "Swing State 2024 Polling: Biden Trails Trump in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Leads Trump in Michigan" (Emerson College Polling).

"In the poll we have in the field right now, only 0.4 percent of dials have yielded a completed interview."

"If you were employed as one of our interviewers at a call center, you would have to dial numbers for two hours to get a single completed interview.... Call screening is definitely part of the problem, but if you screen your calls almost 100 percent of the time, it might be a little less of one than you might think. About one-fifth of our dials still contact a human. But once we do reach a person, we’ve got a number of challenges. Is this the right human? (We talk only to people named on the file, so that we can use their information.) If it is the right person, will he or she participate? Probably not, unfortunately.... The main thing is we make sure that the sample of people we do reach is demographically and politically representative, and if not, we adjust it to match the known characteristics of the population. If we poll a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by two percentage points, and our respondents wind up being registered Democrats by a four-point margin, we give a little less weight to the Democratic respondents. We make similar adjustments for race; age; education; how often people have voted; where they live; marital status; homeownership; and more."

 Writes Nate Cohn in "Who in the World Is Still Answering Pollsters’ Phone Calls? Response rates suggest the 'death of telephone polling' is getting closer" (NYT).

How do they know "Democrats outnumber Republicans by two percentage points" other than by relying on already unreliable polls?

The article doesn't really answer the question in the headline, which I read as saying what kind of weirdos are answering these polls and why do we care what they think?

"Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech."

"Many on the right, for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms.... However you define cancel culture, Americans know it exists, and feel its burden. In a new national poll commissioned by Times Opinion and Siena College, only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. The poll found that 84 percent of adults said it is a 'very serious' or 'somewhat serious' problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism.... 'There’s a crisis around the freedom of speech now because many people don’t understand it, they weren’t taught what it means and why it matters,' said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of PEN America, a free speech organization.... This editorial board plans to identify a wide range of threats to freedom of speech in the coming months, and to offer possible solutions... Free speech demands a greater willingness to engage with ideas we dislike and a greater self-restraint in the face of words that challenge and even unsettle us...."

From "America Has a Free Speech Problem" by the New York Times Editorial Board.

Okay, good start. I will continue to keep track of what the NYT is doing in relation to freedom of speech. I'll just note here that if Americans haven't been "taught what it means and why it matters," the NYT bears some responsibility. It's not a neutral observer of the culture, but a very active participant.

"Approximately 69% of Russians now approve of Putin, compared to the 61% who approved of him in August 2021..."

"... according to Russian polling agency the Levada Center. And 29% of Russians disapprove of Putin, down from 37% in August 2021. The polling group is the leading independent sociological research organization in Russia and is widely respected by many scholars, including myself.... The Russian public largely believes that the Kremlin is defending Russia by standing up to the West. Putin has enjoyed relatively high approval ratings since he first became president in May 2000. His popularity averaged 79% in his first 20 years in office. Some political scientists attribute this trend to 'Putin’s personal charisma and public image' and Russians’ preference for a 'strong ruler.' Other experts argue that Putin’s approval ratings are actually related to Russians’ indifference and symbolic trust in political leaders.... The popular narrative is that Russia is a besieged fortress, constantly fending off Western attacks. Half of Russians blame the current crisis on the U.S. and NATO, while 16% think Ukraine is the aggressor. Just 4% believe Russia is responsible.... Polls conducted since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 consistently show that most Russians support the independence of the two self-declared republics in the Donbas. But they do not see them becoming a part of the Russian Federation...."

From "Putin’s public approval is soaring during the Russia-Ukraine crisis, but it’s unlikely to last" at The Conversation. That's by Arik Burakovsky, Assistant Director, Russia and Eurasia Program, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

"In a hypothetical 2024 match up, former President Donald Trump is at 48% and President Biden is at 44%..."

"... a two point change from November where Trump was ahead 45% to 43%. Both poll results are within the polls margin of error."

A new report from Emerson College Polling.

"A group of top Democratic Party pollsters are set to release a public statement Tuesday acknowledging 'major errors' in their 2020 polling — errors that left party officials stunned..."

"... by election results that failed to come close to expectations in November.... 'Twenty-twenty was an "Oh, s---" moment for all of us,' said one pollster involved in the effort, who was granted anonymity to discuss the process candidly. 'And I think that we all kinda quickly came to the point that we need to set our egos aside. We need to get this right.'...  [S]ky-high turnout for Trump among irregular voters only explains a small slice of the problem, the pollsters concluded. Even if the polls conducted last year were properly adjusted for future turnout, they still would have been biased toward Democrats. The memo floats at least three possible causes: late movement toward Trump and Republican candidates... the Covid pandemic causing people who stayed home to answer the phone at a greater rate... and the decline of social trust and faith in institutions."

Politico reports. 

FROM THE EMAIL: lawlizard writes:

They nailed it when they noted “decline of social trust and faith in institutions.” I took a phone poll in 2002. I was a conservative living in a liberal city. The pollster actively tried to get me to say what he wanted to hear. I assume pollsters continue to do the same. My husband told a pollster in 2020 he was going to vote for Joe Biden, and then laughed about it for 3 days. The purpose of a poll should be to find out what I do think, and inform the politician what he should do based on its popularity, not to tell me what I ought to think. Polling instead says we want to spend a lot of money on social programs, you are telling us you do not want to pay more in taxes for these programs, but you do like spending on “infrastructure.” If we call social programs “infrastructure,” can we spend the money the way we want? You want voter id and secure elections, if we tell you that this is “racist,” does it change your mind. Polling like many other institutions has been corrupted. It’s not about listening, it’s about manipulating. They have lost sight of their institutional role and so it can no longer be effective. If you are going to manipulate me, then I’m going to manipulate you first.

Me, I just don't answer the phone if Siri doesn't announce who's calling. You'll have to leave voice mail to get through by phone, and I don't think pollsters ever do that. So I am never polled. I didn't vote, but I stood in waiting, prepared to vote, if motivated — a raging "undecided" in a swing state.

AND: Ray So CA emails:

Nate Silver says "Trump Can Still Win, But The Polls Would Have To Be Off By Way More Than In 2016," but there's good reason to believe the polls are more off.

Before I tell you what I think is the good reason, let's see what Nate Silver came up with:

Biden is unambiguously ahead in the polls. The Normal-Polling-Error Zone is a place we talked about in 2016, when we told you that Trump was only a normal-sized polling error away from beating Hillary Clinton.... The Zone of Plausibility...is where we are this year. I think of the Zone of Plausibility as extending out to reflect an error of up to two standard deviations — so, it’s a race where the favorite has somewhere from an 84 percent to 98 percent chance of winning. You wouldn’t consider the underdog winning in an election like this to be a routine occurrence. But, well, it’s plausible, and it isn’t that hard to find precedents for it.... At the same time, though, a 2016-style polling error wouldn’t be enough for Trump to win.... A Trump win remains plausible.... Polls can be wrong — indeed, the whole point of our probabilistic forecast is to tell you the chances of that — but they’re more likely to be wrong when a candidate’s lead is narrower....

Unless I missed something buried in all that statistical wonkery, Silver doesn't talk about why the polls might be more wrong in 2020 than they were in 2016. Here's what I'd say about that. 

First, there might be more reason this time around for Trump supporters to avoid talking to pollsters or to give dishonest answers to pollsters. Not only is there fear of economic and social consequences for supporting Trump, there's open advocacy of the practice of lying to pollsters. I don't think there's anything like that on the Biden side.

Second, if pollsters are at all inclined to skew their numbers to manipulate opinion, they may have been more motivated to do so in 2020. What Trump did in 2016 was a massive surprise, and the defenses against him were lower. There was complacency at the time. Smug confidence. In 2020, there has been endless anxiety and hyper-alertness. I think that may have led pollsters to provide better numbers.

Third, if pollsters plumped up the numbers for Biden to feed the emotional and political needs of Democrats, then that may backfire as confidence based on polls leads some Democrats not to bother to vote, especially if they don't feel too great about Biden. 

Fourth, we've got coronavirus this time, and anti-Trumpsters seem to be way more worried about it than Trumpsters. So more Trumpsters will show up in person to vote. More anti-Trumpsters have turned to mail-in voting, but who knows how well they've filled out the forms and whether they've put their envelopes into mailboxes in time to get counted?

A postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College’s Program in Quantitative Social Science quantifies the gender polarization from the Kavanaugh hearings.

I'm reading "The Kavanaugh confirmation polarized women, and motivated them to vote — some for Republicans, some for Democrats" by Jin Woo Kim in The Washington Post.

I recruited about 4,600 U.S. residents through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. (Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)...

Hmm.

MTurk respondents are not representative of the U.S. population. To ensure that the findings were not driven by the younger and more well-educated people who tend to be overrepresented in the MTurk platform, I checked...

I won't copy the explanation of how he checked.

... Republican women supported the court more after Kavanaugh’s confirmation by nine percentage points, while Democratic women mistrusted it more by 11 percentage points. As a result, the gap between Republican and Democratic women increased from 15 to 34 points....

Because Republican and Democratic women’s views of the court changed by about the same amount in opposite directions, the average gender gap in views about the court remained roughly the same.

In short, Kavanaugh’s confirmation was indeed polarizing, as many predicted. But the most pronounced polarization was not between men and women, but between Republican women and non-Republican women.

Nate Silver creates anxiety and allays it.

Seems fair to say that Democrats' polling is underwhelming in states and districts with large numbers of Hispanic voters. At the same time, polling has sometimes lowballed Democrats' numbers in these areas.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 19, 2018

Some people will never understand us "undecideds."

How will you vote in the 2018 mid-term elections?

— PollingAmerica🇺🇸 (@PollingAmerica) July 21, 2018

"The Monmouth University Poll... finds a large bipartisan majority who feel that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a 'Deep State' of unelected government officials."

"Just over half of the public is either very worried (23%) or somewhat worried (30%) about the U.S. government monitoring their activities and invading their privacy."

There are no significant partisan differences – 57% of independents, 51% of Republicans, and 50% of Democrats are at least somewhat worried the federal government is monitoring their activities...

... 6-in-10 Americans (60%) feel that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. Just 26% say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials in determining policy. Democrats (59%), Republicans (59%) and independents (62%) agree that appointed officials hold too much sway in the federal government.

“We usually expect opinions on the operation of government to shift depending on which party is in charge. But there’s an ominous feeling by Democrats and Republicans alike that a ‘Deep State’ of unelected operatives are pulling the levers of power,” [said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute].

Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term “Deep State;” another 24% are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington....

Americans of black, Latino and Asian backgrounds (35%) are more likely than non-Hispanic whites (23%) to say that the Deep State definitely exists. Non-whites (60%) are also somewhat more likely than whites (50%) to worry about the government monitoring them and similarly more likely to believe there is already widespread government monitoring of U.S. citizens (60% and 49%, respectively). More non-whites (35%) than whites (23%) say that such monitoring is rarely or never justified....

Seems like a great issue for Republicans, no? Potential to drive a wedge into Democratic Party constituencies.

"In an extremely narrow sense," Nate Silver is "not that surprised by the outcome..."

"... since polling — to a greater extent than the conventional wisdom acknowledged — had shown a fairly competitive race with critical weaknesses for Clinton in the Electoral College. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that Clinton will eventually win the popular vote as more votes come in from California. But in a broader sense? It’s the most shocking political development of my lifetime."

I'm reading that this morning because I was wondering how Nate Silver — after getting all those clicks — would protect his lucrative brand. 

"This race may come down to the independent vote. Right now, they tilt for Trump. By a narrow margin, they opted for Obama over Romney in 2012."

Said the pollster J. Ann Selzer, who oversaw the new Bloomberg Politics poll, which has Trump edging out Clinton by 2 points in Florida and by 2 points nationally in 4-person race (and 1 point in head-to-head race). [ADDED: I think I'm misreading the linked report at Politico and that there is no new Bloomberg national poll, only sentences that seem general but are really only about Florida.]

How is it possible? Last night, I was wondering why Clinton isn't ahead by 50 points, considering the way the press has been reporting lately. But the press is skewed, trying to shape what we do, and we're only entering the last phase when reputations are on the line and media risk looking like fools if something happens that seems to blindside them.

A mere 7 days ago, Bloomberg Politics had Clinton with a 9 point lead. And pollster J. Ann Selzer was saying: "This poll shows movement toward Clinton with all the right groups it takes to win—including men and those without a college degree. Their alignment with Clinton is a formidable change in the algebra."

Is Bloomberg Politics a screwy polling operation? I found an article by Nate Silver from last August, "Election Update: When One Poll Makes A Big Difference" — the one poll that made a big difference was Bloomberg Politics and it made a big difference because Silver's model weights the different polls based on their quality, and Bloomberg Politics is one of his high-quality polls:

By “high quality,” I mostly mean a poll with a high pollster rating — which are based on a pollster’s past accuracy and methodology — since the trend line adjustment puts more weight on better-rated polls. Selzer & Company (which also conducts the prestigious Des Moines Register Poll) more than qualifies: It’s one of just six polling firms with an A-plus rating from FiveThirtyEight.

Silver added:

There’s another, more subtle dimension to this also, which is that Selzer hasn’t polled the general election very often this year. (Just the three national polls so far.) The trend-line adjustment is therefore designed to give a lot of weight to a Selzer poll whenever it weighs in. By contrast, it gives less weight to any given poll from a pollster that surveys the race frequently, such as by conducting a national tracking poll.

Well, Selzer weighed in today, and the trend line is wild — an 11-point change in one week. [ADDED: Again, as noted above, I think I misread the text at Politico.]

Tooling along, the GOP car was making good time, headed for its destination: Victory in November.

DRIVER: Hey! What happened? Did we get off the 2014 Interstate? Was there an off-ramp back there? What does the polling app say? Is it re-routing? But the polling app didn't warn us before the road got weird looking. I don't trust this app to re-route. We could get even farther afield.

PASSENGER: If we're off the Interstate, we'd better stop and ask for directions. Look, there are lots of people around who seem like they might be helpful.

DRIVER: What, just stop and ask somebody?! We're driving the GOP car, and you want some guy by the side of the road to give us directions to Victory in November?

PASSENGER: Well, clearly we are lost. MAN BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD looks like he's concerned about our predicament, looks like he knows the routes around the Political Landscape...

As the GOP car scoots to a stop, MAN BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD scrambles up, smiling, as if he's delighted at the opportunity to help.

Rasmussen polled of public opinion about Clint Eastwood.

Because the poll was conducted before and after his unusual performance at the convention, you get some insight:

While Republican officials were uncertain about Eastwood, 78% of GOP voters have a favorable opinion of him. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that Democrats are evenly divided: 42% favorable and 44% unfavorable. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 58% view Eastwood favorably, and only 21% have a negative view....

Bloomberg polling has Obama 13 points ahead of Romney.

"Can that possibly be true?"

The firm that conducted the Bloomberg survey, Selzer & Co., is well regarded by polling experts. The margin of error for its likely voter results was 3.6 percentage points.

The poll did not include an over-representation of Democrats, or African-Americans – both groups that skew heavily toward the incumbent. One thing that might account for its result, as compared with other surveys, is that it shows Obama doing better among white voters. The Bloomberg survey has him with 43 percent of the white vote, as opposed to 50 percent for Romney.