“Plausible”?

I completely agree that polls are going to have to move significantly to make a Biden win plausible. But polls have actually been significantly off. The suozzi race is just the latest example. A 1 or 4 point margin becoming 8 is significant.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 2, 2024

"Plausible” is a Trumpian argument. It’s the argument Trump used to justify (well, to himself) all his attempts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election. He was convinced the polls (again: the ones he liked) had declared him invincible (a la Macbeth?), and he used that conviction to declare the outcome fraudulent.

I’m not saying that was enough. I’m saying that’s what he did.

So why does a Biden win have to be made “plausible”? Why does it have to align with the “buckshot use if the curved question” (Walt Kelly) asked of less than 1000 people who answered the phone to a stranger (I never do)?

Every four years we swear by the power of campaigning (he/she who raises the funds has the credibility) but demand the polls be the Delphic Oracle which will reveal the true future because polls, not campaigns, are what count.

“Plausible”? Are our elections now only valid if they align with the polls and the expectations of the pundits? Is that what we have “normalized”? Trump’s wailing about his losses have all been based on the predictions he (and his supporters) want to hear. They were made “plausible” because we all look to polls to pull back the curtain if time and shine a light into the darkness that is the unknowable future.

Maybe let’s just say there will be a political campaign, as there has been since Washington stepped down, and the polls will imperfectly try to mirror the results before they happen. It’s not Biden’s election that has to be plausible; it’s the interpretation of the chicken entrails that we call “polling.”

Reminder that Nate Silver got famous by estimating outcomes based on the actual results of primaries. https://t.co/PJNyUzoefU

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 3, 2024