You'd Have to Be On Mushrooms to Believe Trump Is Beating Biden By 20 Points Among Young Voters
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.
It was done entirely by phone. What person under, say, 60 answers an unknown call on their phone at this point? And if they left a voicemail to call them back, who would trust it? Basically, they're getting extremely gullible people (i.e. mostly Trump voters) to respond to the poll.
I think the only way you can do successful polling at this point is focus groups with carefully selected demographics, and I would even be dubious there.
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.
Even if I did pick up the phone, which I doubt I would, I would think it was a scam.
You guys are answering the unknown caller? Wow.
Why? Like, don’t.
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.
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.
You definitely have my sympathies. Best of luck on the job hunt. I hope you find something great.
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
What if it was the employer calling to see if you gamble?
Sounds like they gave good answers, unless they were applying to a casino.
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.
It should also be said that polls are only responded to by people who a) have the time, and b) have something to say.
B alone is enough to make the respondents select for far more extreme than the average person. A also selects for… people who’ve got nothing else going on.
After watching The Telemarketers, I'm even less inclined to pick up the phone than ever. And it was already at the "almost never" point.
or you know mass texting
Maybe. I'd still wonder if that was a scam and probably not reply.
Seriously a random text from “ABC News” asking for a response? Um, no. Not in a million years. That stuff is for batshit morons who don’t know a . . . ahhhh, right.
Serious: why wouldnt you answer an unknown number?
Because it's very likely a scam or someone trying to sell me something. What is the advantage of answering one?
I do sometimes get important calls from some gov. office or something like that. As a example, I lost my wallet and a about a week later the office in charged of the found-lost things called to say someone had found it and I could pick it up.
But to be fair I only ever got 1 scam call and most people I know got the same one (Europolice scam last year)
Like, where I live scam/sell calls are just not a thing, so might be regional.
Buy yeah, thanks for the answer, I get you point now.
Europe may be different, but I get a good 12-14 probably scam/spam calls a week here in the U.S. I can tell because they're never in an area code I'm familiar with or one from a place where I moved away from and don't know anyone anymore.
Shrooms have nothing to do with mass delusions. In fact, they may help cure them.
Yeah, a really stupid headline by someone who doesn't understand mushrooms.
Probably ate a few grams at a party one time and had a panic attack.
The more relevant drug is probably “huffing sister’s farts while engaging in incest in back woods like perfect GOP voter”
"You'd have to be on jenkem to believe THIS"
“Mmmmm! Conspiracies go better with JENKEM(tm)! “
I was thinking datura, since it apparently makes people very suggestive to things as well as having a horrible trip in many cases. To the US, the Trump presidency was probably the political equivalent of "a 72-hour psychedelic nightmare from which you may never recover."
“You’d have to be out of your goddamned mind” got poo-poohed by the editorbot.
Underestimating this discarded foreskin is what got us here in the first place.
Don't get complacent.
This is deeply insulting to mushroom users, particularly given that people tend to be more empathetic because of those experiences, not less.
Shrooms specifically were a weird choice for the headline for sure. But it's just another variation on "drugs make you stupid and only teetotallers have an accurate perception of the world". It's really no less offensive than if they'd gone with "only a woman would believe..." or "you'd have to be a middle-school dropout to believe...". Like why? Why target some random group and call them out as idiots incapable of seeing what's right in front of their faces, when it has absolutely 0 to do with the content of the article? You'd have to be on PCP to believe this is a good way to write a headline :D
You're reading way too much into it. The point is that you'd have to have a warped sense of reality, which is something mushrooms are known to do. No random groups were targeted.
Don't get complacent. That's the most important takeaway. We need to not only beat Republicans, but to give them massive losses. We want them to lose by double digit margins so they realize fascism has no place in the US, and MAGA can ma-get the fuck out of here.
I'm really curious to read more about the poll itself later, just with how unusual this is. What in the methodology screwed it up? Or do they just have an incredibly wide confidence interval?
It's also worth remembering I think, polling was very wrong in the midterms. They suggested at best that Republicans would win by a little bit, and at worst the "red tidal wave". And we know now it was a trickle, that they can't even claim as a total victory. Dems gained a Senate seat, and a lot of important state government positions in swing states.
There's a few causes for this mismatch I believe:
There's a lot of shitty Republicans pollsters these days that provide a lot of low quality data.
Analysts overcorrected their models after 2020 and it undercounts Democrats.
The huge backlash for overturning Roe isn't being captured in polls for some reason. Abortion continues to be a huge issue that's benefitting Democrats. The economy and inflation were thought to be the largest drivers for the midterms, but if they were, people saw Democrats as the solution for that.
These fascists aren't going to suddenly become sane democratic loving colleagues if MAGA falls out of fashion. Even if they put their masks back on, they're still going to be fascists.
The republican party needs to die. Scorched earth, razed to the ground. Democrats need a super majority, and then subsequently split into 2 or more parties to become the new 2 party system, or preferably ranked choice and have to work as a coalition.
Edit - and there needs to be a public education attempt at making the cultists masses understand the dangers of fascism, and that it's wrong. We currently have a culture war trying to rebrand the civil war and nazism as misunderstood. The parallels on nazi Germany are not hyperbole. We need public accountability and public education to aggressive stave this off before its too late.
I completely agree with everything you've said. My view is that if the Republicans lose big, they'll abandon the fascist wing and see it as a liability to winning elections. If they get absolutely crushed, their turn towards fascism and Trump becomes completely repudiated, and they're going to try and distance themselves from it. These dregs will always exist, we just need to teach conservatives what happens when you ally with them -- you lose, big time.
I think the party would be likely to fragment on a loss. You'll have the fascist freedom caucus on one end, and the more moderate Republicans on the other. Neither however will be large enough to win elections, especially as they'll compete for the same voters. My prediction is the Republicans die in all but name, and those closer to the middle join Democrats.
Also keep in mind the sampling bias of only including people willing to take part in polls.
Unknown number? Stranger knocking at my door? I'm not answering.
Yeah this is the Achilles heel of polling. You need a sample as close to random as possible, but that's hard if 75% of those people don't respond.
This was a good start. But then you finished by giving loads of reasons to remain complacent.
Polticial polls have to adjust for turnout and that is extremely difficult to get right. But it is a nailed on guarantee that Trump fans will turn out. Dems should be worried that the polls (in general, not just this one) are very close. Biden's presidency has been somewhat better than expected from a progressive perspective but is still too beholden to the kind of Dem that lost it in 2016 by appealing solely to rich people instead of the tens of millions of voters with no one to vote for. They will struggle to enthuse the people they need to enthuse and that is showing up in the polls.
Don't get complacent. Don't push narratives that encourage complacency.
The second part of my comment is more of an academic exercise in trying to determine why the polls might be off. I'm curious as to what's throwing them off.
That's why I opened by saying we shouldn't get complacent. It's worthwhile to figure out why this isn't going right, but irrespective of the answer, we can't let our guard down.
Who the hell thought this headline idea is good wtf
It's kind of slanderous to mushrooms
Libelous. Slander is spoken. Libel is written.
Yes, that's true. I read it aloud to myself though.
People that haven't ever actually done any drugs before.
It seems to be part of a series called "Politics With Charles P. Pierce", which from the looks of it attempts to take a relaxed, informal take on an op-ed.
So the title seems fine for the context I think.
If anyone here is just joining the party, Charles Peirce was one of the few corporate news voices (all of whom were op-ed, very purposefully) who was allowed to say what we were actually seeing.
For a few years it was a crushing torrent of gaslighting and insanity and the corporate news just went with it. Jeff Tiedrich on twitter and Charles Pierce in Esquire were two loud voices saying wtf everytime some new batshit thing would happen. It was very helpful.
Those of you upset about the poor take on mushrooms, take five. The gist is that polls this bad shouldn’t be blowtorched onto the news cycle. Which us exactly what many of us were saying yesterday.
Because bullshit like this poll is how republiQans fool enough of the people to crack open the electoral college. It’s the 2016 playbook, being run again right in front of us like we didn’t just go through that hell. F that.
Shrooms make you more perceptive, not less.
They also can make people hallucinate, which was the point.
Putting aside a LOT of other issues, the reason we’re seeing more polls that are very clearly nonsense is twofold:
My phone literally doesn't ring unless it's a known contact. I don't even see the call coming in to answer if I wanted to.
Everyone else can leave a message and get a call back if it's something I care about.
why mushrooms and not opioids? or crack?
Mushrooms don't deserve this. They've proven beneficial and healthy in defeating depression, properly coping with trauma, cognitive decline, etc. This negatively associates mushrooms with idiocy and it's irresponsible and unwarranted.
Can confirm, I eat mushrooms, and I still can't believe this shit.
The only way to get those numbers is through hallucinations.
Maybe it should say, you should take mushrooms if you think [...]
Nailed it.
You're god damn right!
Trump might not be 20 points ahead of Biden, but you'd better fucking turn out at the poll like he is.
Fuck Trump. He belongs in prison.
Don't insult mushrooms like this, lmao, what did they ever do to hurt you?
I don't disagree, but those young voters still have to show up to vote or the result is the same. They didn't show up in the last election and my state anded up with a Republican supermajority.
Turnout among young voters in 2022 was the second highest for a midterm in the past 30 years.
That's encouraging, and also discouraging since it wasn't enough
At a whopping 27%.
Which, while not great, seems more reasonable when compared to the overall turnout of 46%.
I'm not sure a ~20 point difference really does anything to counteract the narrative that young people don't vote. Especially when those that are 60+ are more than twice as likely to vote than those 18-29.
I guess it depends on what turnout you expect from specific demographics, how you interpret the progress in the turnout of young people, and how you end the sentence, "young people don’t vote because..."
I would never expect voter turnout of 18-29y/o to be any where near the turnout of 60+ voters. Young voters face issues that just don't affect older voters as much, like busy lives/family/work, registration issues, etc. So what's your threshold where you say, "young voters showed up"? Even the numbers for 65+ voters is a bit underwhelming at <70% turnout. I'm optimistic about the trajectory of young voter turnout, but some think it's not happening fast enough or that it's just a blip.
"You'd have to be on mushrooms to think Trump will become president" > an annoying lot of people pre-2016.
If the young people that actually go out to vote happen to be the ones that like Trump, Tate, Musk and the like, then yeah, he can pull 100% ahead of Biden.
Polling is vote manipulative.
Love the casual stigma around drugs that aren't alcohol or tobacco
Get shitfaced and cause a punch-up, everyone understands. Take a few mushrooms and watch a nature documentary, everyone loses their minds.
Don't knock mushrooms. They actually help you clear your mind and make good decisions.
They publish it to try and suppress voters to make them feel like there's no chance. Then when they lose they can claim election fraud because the bogus polling had them winning. It's a common tactic Conservatives use now to suppress votes. People need to show up no matter what the polling or news is saying.
Jfc the US is such a dumpster fire.
you are not wrong
Good for them for publishing an outlier poll while framing it appropriately. It happens, and releasing anyway shows integrity.
I have absolutely no intention of voting for Trump, but if you ask me on a poll about it, I might tell the pollster that I plan to vote for Trump. I don’t want people getting too comfortable with an assumed outcome ever again.
Pffft.. I've been microdosing for years and I would never believe that shit!
Mid 20s gen z here. I'll be sure to vote for Biden. All in all he's pretty alright in my book. Sure things could be better, but that's going to take a bit more time, hopefully his successors will be better.
Can we have politicians that are at least 20 years younger than moscow mitch?
Only if like 15 million more young voters show up to primaries. Fat chance, mate.
Here's a writeup by FiveThirtyEight that happens to now be a part of ABC but didn't participate in this pill: How outlier polls happen — and what to do with them
These polls also don't sample people who use call screening (Google Voice for me) to ask unknown callers to say their name, because this breaks most robodialers.
There are dozens of us!!
That's a good write-up. I generally agree with 538's philosophy on outliers, include them in the data but weigh them less heavily.
Polling has fallen into the same problem as everything else, they just skew the methods to make the numbers fit a narrative, be that the person paying them or some misguided ideas. Polling has been shit for years now, just ignore it
Now let’s watch how quickly that piece of shit coward uses these polls to validate his tyrannical campaign to rule America. And remember: these are the “fake news networks.”
Honesty don’t understand how his dipshit supported can’t see how it’s always fake new when it’s negative, but when the most “untrustworthy” and hated news sources suddenly post things that are positive towards him- they magically become accurate.
You’ve got to be braindead to make any logical sense from that.
You'd have to be a fox "news" watcher.
Msuhrooms sound real good, guess that's a plan for the weekend.
More bullshit from our bullshit media ~ "Can't understand how a high plains grifter got elected!?"
Depends on what exactly each poll is asking or saying.
If you go by popular vote, Biden could be well ahead in that demographic.
But 1) Not all young people vote, andas a whole they lag far behind compared to other age groups, particularly ages 45+
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individuals-who-voted-in-thousands-and-individuals-who-voted-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population-by-age/
And 2) The popular vote is greatly negated by the electoral college.
So If you want to become President, one way is to appeal to what old people in Red states can be persuaded to believe.