GOP up to 6% point lead in latest generic poll

[Belsnickel]

(05-22-2018, 11:00 PM)Nebuchadnezzar Wrote: The best type of "Polls" are stripper polls!

But in the political world, the best are Exit Polls. Oh man, the 2000 election of Bush over Gore was great. Everyone said they voted for Gore, news outlets were reporting Gore was going to win because of the Exit Polls and then Florida happened.

Polls are garbage, they just can't be taken seriously any more. 
Hillary was supposed to beat Trump
Romney was supposed to beat Obama, hell a houseplant should have beaten Obama but Romney disappeared, lol.
McCain was supposed to beat Obama but what's her face was named Vice Presidential Candidate.
Kerry, in his bicycle shorts was supposed to beat Bush.

I think the last time the polls predicted the winner was Clinton second term since he had to move to the center after his first terms mid-term elections.

Hell, I'm probably wrong on this but wasn't Mondale supposed to beat Ronny?

(05-22-2018, 11:31 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Is that anything similar to Hillary being so far up on the Donald in the polls, prior to the election?

I wish you could have seen my body sigh when I read these posts. If you look at the polls from the 2016 election and compare that with the popular election results, you will see that many of the reputable pollsters had the results well within the MoE. The issue is that pollsters don't have a good way to account for the electoral college. They don't have the resources to really get down to the district level for each district. This is, coincidentally, the reason why the generic ballot national polls we're talking about in this thread have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Polling isn't garbage. The data in polls and the calculations used by pollsters to come up with their results is good. What isn't good is when the punditry in the media grabs hold of that information and makes claims from it that they think are supported by the data and the statistics, but really aren't. That's what is coloring the views of polls right now.

When you see a story that is about polling results, I recommend that everyone click in and read the actual polling toplines or the analysis from the pollster themselves. Even better is to find a meta-analysis (this is why I go to 538 often, because they do a meta of the various polls). But read what the pollsters have to say, not the pundits. 99% of the time you will find that the punditry is drawing an inference that may not be conclusive from the polling.