(10-06-2020, 10:17 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: No one is paying the pollsters to make fake polls.   Their credibility is all they have.  They're not going to publish a fake or incorrect poll on purpose.  

But that leaves the question, can the polls be wrong?   I think the pollsters are doing their very best to get it right this time.  

A good poll has to be constructed pretty carefully.  They have to get the correct sampling of democrats, republicans, old people, young people, rich people, poor people, men, women, different races, college degree or high school degree, cell phones, land lines, and so on.  They have to try and predict who is going to vote.   It's not easy.   Just getting people to answer the phone is getting harder and harder, with cell phones screening out people not on a person's contact list.  Last time, they didn't realize that there would be a split based on educational levels, with voters without a college education going heavily for Trump.

Polls are paid for my the parties and others. They may try to sample correctly, but generally it is harder to sample conservatives because they don't usually talk to unknown people on the phone or like to give their voting info out. When you already oversample, then add that some people don't want to announce they are voting for Trump, it skews the numbers begin time.

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