hm I suppose this is tough to quantify, my subjective experience has just been that the us polling industry is much less cutthroat, here there's constantly firms spawning & dying & trying to prove themselves maybe also that there's a much bigger % of the us where an x% swing isn't as important?
The swing state thing is definitely real, but it’s also definitely not true that polls only do phone calls. One of the big discourses in polling at the last election (in addition to all the new mysterious companies that had popped up) was whether text and online polls were useful and how to fix em
I have this one saved because it’s so funny and it looks like pollsters have been arguing about online polls since at least 2022!
yeah, this is what got me interested in this topic in the first place!
Our polling is pretty good when Trump isn’t on the ballot, seems most likely to be a low social trust polarization issue IMO
Which I assume you’ll be inheriting in your own weird global maga trucker convoy types
that stuff seems to have peaked in 2021 actually, getting a rubioesque charisma void to steal their thunder and then flop in the election is a pretty big hindrance
True and global maga seems to be faceplanting pretty hard rn anyway
This is speaking very generally. Our polls suck. Only do phones. Etc. I'm not an EXPERT either. In vast majorities of the country a large swing would do nothing. Most states are fairly safe and lower than that incumbents in those "safe" states always win practically. /
So heavy polling ends up only happening in like, Ohio (or wherever the really contested seat or district is) Like, my state hasn't gone red in over 30 years. And based on recent elections it's not even close. So it's a ghost town in terms of polls and political ads most cycles. (except local)
That's not to say pollsters don't exist here and aren't doing things but, Like during the presidential races when you are getting weekly updates of the percentages, they are calling people in Michigan, Georgia, NC. Places where swings happen and those swings MATTER.
Several companies also do daily national trackers
Yeah. It's a complicated industry and it's impossible to speak for it as a whole lol. So when I say like "pollsters do X" Think tanks and political groups are also paying for polls constantly. It's not just about elections. But elections are their BIG money.