Yeah, sometimes.

But, like Lemmy is (almost) entirely populated by people who so strongly disagreed with the political drama (either uspol or redditpol) of reddit that they took specific action about it.

It's a wonder Lemmy isn't all radical politics.

The people conducting the polls use a technique called random sampling to select candidates from a pool that gives more accuracy. But it's not perfect and the academics think it's sus too (I dropped a few studies in another comment).

You have to dig for it a bit, but the actual survey can be downloaded (as a pdf) from CNBC. Their data show bias. The data over-representing people over 60. Their education numbers are biased towards the less educated. Their racial numbers are biased (slightly) towards white people. Their income numbers are biased towards wealthier people.

Their voting data shows a major bias towards people who voted, but I'm actually okay with that one, at least in the context of the political reporting. The people who didn't vote's opinion on the political situation in the US is not as important as the people who voted. As part of an economic survey about holiday spending that also asked questions about the recent election, it's not so great though.

No one of those biases would be a big deal, but in totality they add up to a significant and misleading bias that favors the opinions of older, white, middle-class respondents who vote and graduated high school (but attained no further education). That demographic is also the biggest consumer of CNBC content, so the reason for the bias seems fairly obvious. And again, as an "All-America Economic Survey" that's not really a big deal, especially considering the massive gaps in the data they polled. But as a barometer for political opinion it skews the data in very important and meaningful ways.

Nothing. That information is not actually useful for most people. But I fully acknowledge that's just my opinion.

A better solution would be different metrics for different topics. Consumer faith in the economy can be measured by spending, especially if that data could be broken down by demographic. That data absolutely exists, whether businesses would make it public is abother thing entirely.

The results of the election, especially given it was less than six weeks ago, is a much more compelling data point for how Americans feel about the president elect and his policies. Just under half of all Americans voted, so that's a pretty decent sample.

The "best solution" would be for news organizations to pool resources and do it more reliably. That would mean no more flash polls or opinion polls, and favor longer term tracking of public sentiment.

Social media companies also have much more robust sets of data that better encapsulate public opinion, they could share that quarterly or even just sell reports to news outlets.

But polls are so unreliable and so many people blindly trust and believe them, eliminating that entire class of reporting would be preferable to continuing to publish and circulate that information.

You could turbo charge it by adding that once a vote is taken where no candidate gets a majority no further votes may be held. That would encourage people to keep showing up to vote and to vote for candidates they might not believe deserve death by drowning just to keep the system functioning.

Most of them would be from an academic source most likely. That kind of polling would be very expensive and time consuming. There probably aren't commercial, short term polls with that level of rigor.

A 2020 study published by Berkeley found that the accuracy of election surveys (which are conducted similarly to opinion polls) was grossly exaggerated.

A 2018 Cambridge study says "the level of error has always been substantially beyond that implied by stated margins of error."

The same word I say first everyday: "shit."

I don't know about how "normal" that might be but you're feelings are valid. You also can't stop progress. People are hardwired to make crazy new stuff and we're really good at it.

But just because it exists doesn't mean you have to use it. You can live a rich, full life even living like the Amish or other in low tech environments. The Mininites (like the amish but with phones and cars and computers) only adopt technology that benefits them and thier community. They live more primitively than most of the global north mostly for religious reasons, but there is wisdom in focusing on gizmos, gadgets, and software that improve your life in some way and ignoring what doesn't.

Oligarchs usually don't have to.

How is 🙂 an asshole mood though?

Honestly, I think it might be a deal breaker for me in November. I'm willing to put up with a lot of meat-brained nonsense, but dead children so out soldiers can have an easier commute to kill more is a nonstarter.

If I do decide not to vote in a few months, and not voting gives Trump the presidency, it's what we deserve.

I wanted to be a filmmaker but was forced to choose a different path when my grandfather (who had set up a small college fund for me) refused to pay for school unless I chose something more practical. I caved and majored in journalism (my mom was a photojournalist before I was born) but was so heartbroken I dropped out in my first year. I tried a second time to go to school but I couldn't stay engaged after learning the thing I had been working towards since middle school was no longer an option.

I ended up going to work in tech instead. In my late 20's I thought I would figure out making short films on my own wrote a script, bought some gear, but when I looked at how bad I was at social media and how much I wanted someone to see my work, I thought the odds were against it.

A few years ago some unrelated mental health issues made it impossible for me to work and I am writing a script for an audio drama which is hopefully cheaper to produce and a zine about Utopia while I recover.

Bailing on my dream wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Most of my problems and regrets are related to the undiagnosed and untreated mental illness that destroyed my already struggling career a few years ago. Not making the elder millennial version of Point Break sucks, but maybe if the audio drama works I can parley that success into a streaming series (Archive 81 style).

This guy is why we have to remind people there are no dumb questions.