Here's the thing, people vote on how they feel. That's why you poll people in this way. It's a rather simple concept no need to attach a crazy amount of meaning to it.

Ideally the facts should be reported and people should be polled. Both are vital.

It's a valid comment, but I disagree that you have to reach that conclusion.

This poll gives a better picture of US citizens' ability (or lack thereof) to obtain and understand basic facts when you combine it with actual data. I.e., the facts alone tell us only what reality is, and the opinion poll alone only tells us what Americans think, but together they tell us how well-informed Americans are.

That, in turn, helps suggest (even if proof is harder) how effective right-wing information technology is, how seamless the Fox News/influencer/social media info bubbles are.

And, as depressing as it is, opinions (the perceptions of a party's or candidates' culpability and capability) decide elections where reality and opinion are in conflict. 2024 proved at least to me that we have reached an inflection point and entered the Disinformation Age, where propaganda actually can consistently win out against reality by sheer flood of disinformation, if it's not moderated or regulated.

Well, we had the same idiotic bullshit of constantly talking about people's vibes on the economy during Biden's term, too, and lots of real thinkpieces about how the Democrats should not dare to bother to talk about facts, but just go with the vibes, and the vibes only, and shame on anyone for talking about reality. Most especially in the run-up to the election of 2024, of course.

I get that you have to poll people for their sentiments, though, but I wish the media would do a better job of explaining to people that there are, indeed, hard numbers we could talk about as well, and "alternative facts" are not a thing.

If a sufficient portion of the population is ignorant or ambivalent of the fact of our creeping, kleptocratic, fascist, psychopathic, pedophile overlords robbing of us our rights and prosperity then nothing changes. People giving a shit does matter more than facts these days. That's not a valuation of opinion over fact, more of an observation of how our propagandized population works.

Just take it as a description of what people are perceiving, not a way of trying to derive the facts. You’re correct, there is data. If you haven’t figured out by now that data is not what governs people’s perception, then you aren’t paying very close attention. We are in a post-data, post-truth culture where knowing the fact is not enough. You have to poll, separately, how those facts are trickling down to perceptions.

I think it's because a poll showing that opinions are shifting that way gives people hope about things getting better, because the hope is that public opinion would drive politics.

It wouldn't really be news to people who are struggling that things are bad. But it is news (and good news at that) if other people's opinions are shifting to acknowledge that.

The subtext I read in this was that opinions are more important than facts and that reporting on the poll results

It's also about driving engagement, a vibes based article about a poll will have a lot more engagement when its shared around social media. Sure you'd still have some people arguing and engaging regalardless, but a large and very vocal portion of the internet has been trained now to just ignore facts that don't fit their narrative as being funded by George Soros or similar such non-sense, they see a title like "data driven research shows economic conditions worsening in key areas" they skip over it as boring and too complicated to understand, but if they see a title saying americans "feel" a certain way, then they as an american (or someone pretending to be american) can chime in about how they personally dont feel that way and anyone who does feel that way is lazy and stupid, and then it becomes a whole chain of people doing that and others citing factual data which then gets ignored.