Not exactly. It’s more like looking at that half full glass of water and asking random strangers “is this glass of water going in the right direction?”
It’s a strange question that assumes we all have the same end goal and success criteria, and we know this is not the case.
All the 4th Estate wants is clicks. Clicks drive revenue and earnings.
If any journalism gets done it is because an individual contributor decided to write an informative and engaging story. The Mgt. of these organizations could care less.
If you are careful which writers you read, you can get a pretty good sense of what is going on.
Polling in 2024 is broken and misleads more than enlightens. It is useful, however, as a click magnet. Don’t fall for it. The only newsworthy polls are conducted by the government.
Depends on whether you have cats.
A practical answer, but do you have a bible quote to “prove” you’re correct?
It’s lazy journalism posing as hardbitten statistical analysis of a multivariable issue with participants (including the journalist) who don’t know what a variable is. It’s more context-free stenography than anything else.
I agree with your assessment. The question is truly worthless as a predictor of political races especially for president. It tells us nothing about how the electorate will vote because there is no follow up question as to the specific reasons behind their answers.
This is just a more generalized version of the garbage that was polling around the ACA, or some of the polling around Ukraine. Any time you ask whether people approve of current policy, you really have to have a directional followup/crosstab. (ACA was particularly that way, where iirc something like a third of anti’s were because it didn’t go far enough.)
“I’m worried about them training the kids in school,” he said. “You got kids today who don’t even want to work. They get free handouts …”
So, in addition to [lazy] Black people “getting free handouts”, we have “kids today” also queueing up for free money. Hmm, somehow our son and daughter missed out, as they incurred debt while helping to finance their education.
Where do these “rural” people get such ideas?
Obviously such questions are simply to create click bait articles for organizations conducting the polls.
sigh
“It turns out that one person’s idea about the country being on the wrong track may be completely the opposite of another person’s version of America’s wrong direction.”
“It turns out” suggests that this conclusion is a suddenly new insight about “wrong track” surveys when it’s been blitheringly obvious for years that simplistic right track/wrong track questions are completely useless unless they delve into precisely what a respondent means and why.
Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve been saying a version of this for years. Right track/wrong track, but for what reason? Is the country not doing enough of thing X? or doing too much of thing Y?
It’s been my argument that there needs to be at least one follow up question included in any reporting/discussion around this topic. Perhaps a “If you had to distill it all down to one reason for your answer, what would it be?”
That would provide more insight into what the right/wrong answer means. This article was far better at capturing that sentiment than I could have articulated (with data, no less !!). Thanks to the original authors and to TPM for republishing it here.
There aren’t many progressives who hate Biden are there? I mean AOC and B Sanders endorse him…