Do the polls matter anymore?

[Sestak]

They will give us an idea of what is happening. It's like someone who wears glasses trying to see without them. It's a burry, you can't see all the little details but you can see the overall picture.

Pretty much this.

[ElectionsGuy]

To a degree. Without any polls, we'd be a lot more lost and we wouldn't have that great of an idea of how an election will turn out. Polls narrow that down a bit, but not as much as they appear to, as the margin of error can make more than a double-digit difference in margin from one end to another. That's not even considering sample biases or other factors too.

In general, we should take any general election polls before the summer of 2020 with a grain of salt. We should keep in mind which regions and states have had biases in the past few election cycles.

[Old Man Willow]

Hillary's statewide numbers were accurate in 2016. In IA/OH she polled in the low to mid 40s, which is what she received. In PA/MI/WI she polled in the mid to upper 40s, which is what she received in the end. Trump over performed, either do to undecideds breaking heavily for him or a "shy Trump voter" effect, but even if you applied that standard to this election's polling so far, he would still be losing PA/MI/WI to Biden, who is getting a majority of the vote in most polls of those states.

[The Mikado]

Use Polls plus Trends.  Its how I got every state right in the midterm senate races.  I knew WV would be closer than expected, as well as Indiana and Missouri would defy the polls and go red by a decent margin, as they did.  Its also explainable that Trump over performed the polls in the rust belt in 2016 while underperformed in places like Nevada and Colorado.

Getting Florida right in 2018 is coin flipping, basically. 50.1-49.9 is a race that could've gone either way.

[Progressive Pessimist]

They will give us an idea of what is happening. It's like someone who wears glasses trying to see without them. It's burry, you can't see all the little details but you can see the overall picture.

Well said.