If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?
Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
At a whopping 27%.
Which, while not great, seems more reasonable when compared to the overall turnout of 46%.
I’m not sure a ~20 point difference really does anything to counteract the narrative that young people don’t vote. Especially when those that are 60+ are more than twice as likely to vote than those 18-29.
I guess it depends on what turnout you expect from specific demographics, how you interpret the progress in the turnout of young people, and how you end the sentence, “young people don’t vote because…”
I would never expect voter turnout of 18-29y/o to be any where near the turnout of 60+ voters. Young voters face issues that just don’t affect older voters as much, like busy lives/family/work, registration issues, etc. So what’s your threshold where you say, “young voters showed up”? Even the numbers for 65+ voters is a bit underwhelming at <70% turnout. I’m optimistic about the trajectory of young voter turnout, but some think it’s not happening fast enough or that it’s just a blip.