The Polls could be off and Democrats could win it all...from 538. It could go the the other way too

[iemanja]

46. I'm tired of all the complaining about the polls

(I know the OP isn't doing this. I'm responding to some of the responses in this thread and many other posts throughout DU).

Either pay attention to them or not, but this claim that 538 is a right-wing conspiracy is absurd. 538 aggregates polls, and it has a statistical model for weighting them based on reliability. That is ALL it does. For ANY poll to have much significance, the results need to be twice the margin of error. Very few polls show those kinds of results since the margins of votes in this country is so narrow. That speaks to the limitations of polls. One can certainly choose to dismiss polls for that reason or because we've seen so much inaccuracy in recent elections. But to claim a polling aggregator is a right-wing plot is ridiculous. People didn't have problems with 538 in the past, but now we are supposed to believe the site is out to get Democrats. It's a transparent excuse.

The election results will be what they are. We will know on Tuesday or Wed. You'll find out then if the polls were right or wrong, but regardless of the outcomes, there is no basis to claim the entire polling industry--and aggregators like 538-- are out to get you.

What there is, legitimately, is a problem in the media about how they report polls. They underplay the importance of margins of error and pretend that the polls are absolutely predictive. The media, and with it the public, have little understanding of statistics (count me among them), so they greatly overestimate what small differences in polls mean. They do the same thing every election cycle, even when they mistakenly overstated Democrats election changes. They may be doing to the same with Republicans this year--or not--but that's because of how the media handles polls, not because they (including, supposedly, MSNBC) have suddenly become MAGA. It's because they always do the same thing with elections and NEVER reconsider their approach when proven wrong.