Demographics and Elections Commentary
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7/8/2022:
Democrat pollster: Brian Kemp up in Georgia -- and so is Herschel Walker
[Hot Air]
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Photo credit: AP Photo/Butch Dill
A Democrat-run outlier poll is good news for.... Republicans?
Maybe not. This is likely to be just a case of setting up the bowling pin in order to knock it down later.
Every time a poll comes out, particularly one which doesn't support our worldview, every wishful thinker suddenly turns into an instant Ph.D in Mathematics and scrutinizes the "internals" under a microscope; people pretend that they have any clue about sampling methodology, sample sizes, margins of error, etc. This poll will be spared that level of scrutiny because it tells us what we so desperately want to hear, therefore it's OK not to look that gift horse too closely in the mouth.
For unfriendly polls we hear the same old boilerplate drivel from the expert analysts:
- "Polls are rigged!"
- "This company once published a poll which turned out to be wrong -- therefore this one is wrong too!"
- "Pollsters always oversample Democrats! (as if they know what 'oversample' means)
- "Polls are published by the media in order to shape public opinion instead of reflecting public opinion!"
Using those as crutches to explain away everything we don't like is weak, although there is some truth to most of them and this poll is no exception. When a likeable poll comes out in the middle of an election season -- and turns out to be the outlier -- there's another good reason for that which many people miss: How can a Democrat surge (or a Republican crash) in the polls if the Republican doesn't take the lead or at least come close to doing so at some point? This sort of poll very often precedes the "Democrat skyrockets in new polls!" followup which is issued at a later date in an attempt to demoralize GOP voters. These two Georgia races are on track to become perfect illustrations of that tactic.
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