It feels impossible to trust polls — and equally impossible to ignore them. The polling industry faces well-known problems: Only 6 to 7 percent of people will pick up a phone call from a pollster; polls completely failed to find segments of Donald Trump’s base in 2020; and predicting exactly who will vote is mathematically thorny.
Yet polls are indispensable. They’re the only data source that directly asks people how they’re going to vote and credibly attempts to represent the whole electorate. …
So, I collected thousands of Senate polls from past elections, crunched the numbers and came up with some rules of thumb that can help the most wired, frenetic poll consumers stay sane as 2022 unfolds. CONTINUED
David Byler, Washington Post
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