Polling from these guys is useless. The results shouldnât even be shared here.
How is this possible? Is this an outlier or are we this stupid?
For the millionth time. a 42-to-40 result is NOT a âdead heatâ.
Its an outlier, most Quinnipiac polls areâŚthey are notorious for over polling older white people and under polling minorities.
Besides every other major polling firm having her up by double digits, CNN released this battleground state polling today
http://www.local10.com/news/politics/first-on-cnn-poll-shows-clinton-with-battleground-leads
She is blowing him out by huge margins
LOL!
Clinton up by 22 points = solid polling.
Clinton/Trump tied = outlier, Fox polling, land lines, etc.
Sheâs a weak candidate trying to beat a weaker candidate to the finish line. If the 'pubs are able to dump Trump and replace him with say Romney or Ryan, they would win the WH. Trump is as bad as it gets yet heâs still hanging around. Hard to fathom.
I donât know much stock you put into Nate Silverâs 538 Pollster Ratings, but both the ABC/WaPo (Clinton +12) and Qunnipiac (Dead Heat!) get high ratings:
If this is stressing you out remember that the average of the polls is what is important not one single poll in isolation. Clinton is on sound enough footing to be cautiously optimistic at this point.
ExactlyâŚ
In the 2012 election Quinnipiac didnât even make the top 25 for polling accuracy.
Because Romney and Ryan did so well last time ?
Is this an outlier or are we this stupid?
Yes.
Q polls were crappy all through the primaries. All of their general election polling is predicated on white vote share INCREASING and minorities staying home along with Râs getting 1/3 of Latino vote. This is fantasy.
Look at this siteâs poll tracker of all polls, donât take anyone elseâs word for it. This is an outlier. And itâs not the candidate that the GOP cant compete with. Itâs the huge and well funded Clinton machine. And we havenât even seen the big hitters stumping for her yet. Bill, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Obama, Biden. These are some of the most highly politically skilled people in the nation. Going up against âCorporations are people, my friendâ and Eddie Monster? Right.
I couldnât find any cross tabs on this one yet, but for most of this election cycle Quinnipiac is painting a picture of an extremely white electorateâŚwhiter than anything we have seen in over 30 years. They had a poll in CA that had black turn out cut in half from 2012 and Hispanics dropped down to 1% of the electorate.
That sort of thing isnât just an oops. Itâs a fantasy scenario that has no basis in fact. Blacks are going to be roughly 13-14% of the electorate and Hispanics will be north of 11%. If they believe that it will be a whiter electorate, than make some reasonable adjustments to the theoryâŚsay, blacks drop down to 10% and Hispanics only make up 8% (both huge drop offs that would need some justification IMO).
But if you want to factor Quinnipiac into your calculations, go right ahead. For me, I am excluding them along with Ras, until I see some crosstabs that show a more realistic view of the electorate makeup.
The crosstabs in this poll say that Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson will get 28% and 11% respectively from Hispanics. The poll also says that 35% of Hispanics will âprobablyâ or âdefinitelyâ vote for Trump.
If you seriously believe that those two are actually going to get 39% of the Hispanic vote, then I encourage you to take a big portion of your own cash to Vegas and put it on that happening.
http://www.qu.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2363
Just for comparison, Mitt Romney got 27% of the Hispanic vote in 2012. The notion that a candidate who kicked off his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers and more recently declared that a federal judge was unqualified to preside over a case because of his Hispanic background would get MORE Hispanic votes than Romney is farcical.
It gets even stupider: in 2012, Obama got 71% of the Hispanic vote, and Romney got 27%. That total of 98% leaves all of 2% of the Hispanic vote for all the other independent candidates, which included Johnson and Stein. Yet the Quinnipiac poll gives 13% of Hispanics to Johnson and Stein togetherâin the election with the most stridently anti-Hispanic major party candidate in our lifetimes. What on earth could account for that huge increase?
I make no claim to having anything other than a laymanâs understanding of polling, so perhaps there is sound and reasonable methodology to back up Quinnipiacâs numbers. However, if I were in the business of conducting polls and I had numbers showing the two major independent candidates getting 700% more votes from Hispanics than they got in 2012, Iâd question those numbers. If I had numbers showing that the most hostile Presidential candidate that American Hispanics have ever encountered in their lives was getting MORE votes from their collective communities than Mitt Romney did, Iâd question those numbers.
The only thing I can conclude is that Quinnipiacâs voter model is predicated on the assumption that Hispanics and Latinos have gotten markedly dumber over the past four years. The next thing I expect to read from this outfit is that Trump will get 32% of the Muslim vote.
And yes, one poll isnât tremendously meaningful as compared to the polling aggregate; from that standpoint, Quinnipiacâs poll here seems like an outlier and it doesnât warrant any kind of doomsday hysteria. However, the fact that they can publish these numbers without (apparently) any commentary or explanation for their grossly counterintuitive character makes me question howâor whyâthey got there.
Edit: some very interesting info about the Q poll from teacherken over at DK:
It turns out Q does provide the demographic breakdown and weighting model only not in the press release.
But I have problems with their model. They presume a 51-49 female to
male, when for the past two elections it was 53.7-46.3, and in â04 still
53.5 -46.5. They presume a 73% white turnout. While it was 73.7% in
â12, few other people would predict that number to hold, with the only
question being whether it will be at least 70%. Consider that % of vote
that was Hispanic has gone from 6 to 7.4 to 8.4 in the last 3 cyclesThis Q model holds Hispanic at 8%. Given demographic changes and
serious voter registration efforts, unless you think voter suppression
is going to be even more effective this cycle, it makes no sense to
presume an only 8% Hispanic turnout. And it is not just that Trumpâs
strongest demographic, white men without a college degree, has been
going down as a share of the vote, 58.5- 48-44.3 over the last three
cycles, in the same time the total number of people in that demographic
has declined from 106 million to only 103 million.
The Quinnipiac poll was conducted via telephone from June 21-27 among 1,610 registered voters nationwide. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
Just a reminder that the margin of error is a reflection of precision, not accuracy. If you shoot arrows at a target and cluster them all in a very small spot on the outer ring, you are being very precise, though highy inaccurate. Sorry, just thought Iâd mention it.
Quinnipiac has been considered a pretty shit pollster for some time, and outliers do exist. From this very article:
Just about every other poll has Clinton in a comfortable lead, and her battleground state polling looks to be on the up and up.
I think itâs fair for people to hand-wave this one away for the time being.
Real Clear Politics Polling AverageâŚ
GOP NomineesâŚ
6/28/04 Bush 45.2 %
6/28/08 McCain 40.6
6/28/12 Romney 43.7
6/28/16 Trump 39.1
Democratic Nominees
6/28/04 Kerry 42.8%
6/28/08 Obama 47.1
6/28/12 Obama 47.3
6/28/16 Clinton 45.3It is way too early to pay attention to the polls. The top line numbers are all over the place and the internals simply confirm what we already know. I do agree that their assumptions about blacks and Hispanics are fantasy.
Clinton has an opportunity to reintroduce herself if she takes it. She needs to demonstrate clearly that she sides with the people against the elites.
You, bluestatedon and Davey are spot on (this coming from the TPM âpessimistâ 
)
However, it is instructive to, in passing, take note of relative benefits and disadvantages attendant to polling results⌠Things that evoke stark terror can increase our turnout.