this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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Politics
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Political polling has also always carried the inherent bias of more opinionated people being more willing to participate. This doesn't matter in, say, health studies, but it sure does with politics.
You might get a range of opinions, but it's heavily biased toward people who have a stronger urge to share their opinion. That may not always be a matter of huge significance in every single issue, but it definitely is when you're talking about enthusiastic support for a candidate known for having a particularly loudly opinionated base versus begrudging support for a candidate whose base isn't super happy with him.
Polls are going to show that Trump has more support in that context regardless of the truth if it's anywhere remotely close to the level of support for Biden.
Because the reality of polling is that most of the pool of calls you're getting your sample from are no answers, hung up during intro, endless voicemail, or straight up refusals. Completes make up a tiny portion of phone surveys.