The self described newspaper of record, the N.Y. Times displays graphs, red lines and blue lines and comments on polls almost every day.
What is a poll?
A poll is a prediction of a particular event at a specific time.
Newspapers, media in general, rarely discusses the methodologies that vary from pollster to pollster nor explain margin of error.
Pollsters attempt to identify “likely voters,” perhaps registered voters who voted in the prior two presidential elections, or, perhaps four of the last five elections. How you voted is secret, whether you voted is public record. Some pollsters use Facebook data to determine how you voted. Not surprisingly Facebook data is for sale.
From the pools of expected voters the pollsters take a stratified random sample, in other words a microcosm of all expected voters. Perhaps by gender, by age, by race, by education, by income, the more subgroups the more accurate the poll.
The pollsters select the expected voters randomly from within subgroups.
Technology presents a challenge, if you don’t recognize the caller do you answer the phone? Are some subgroups more likely to answer the phone? The biases within polling methodologies impact the accuracy of the poll.
Pollsters all use different methodologies and journalists rank polls by accuracy and average the results; all the polls might be using flawed methodologies. In 2016 and 2020 polling was way off, Slate muses on why reporters and talking heads place so importance in polls
It’s not that we should stop trusting polls entirely. They are a flawed but vital tool for campaigns to know where to devote resources, and for campaign journalists to use in reporting. But an entire industry of pundits and soothsayers have turned polling analysis into something more like a religion while proclaiming it a science. Meanwhile, it is increasingly unclear why these projections are useful at all.
An unanswerable question: will “unlikely voters,” newly registered voters and women voters, who have not previously voted, flock to Kamala?
Creating a pool of previous non-voters, dividing the pool into subgroups by stratified random sample methodologies is complex and I have not seen such polls
Are there women who previously followed their husbands lead who in this election will vote for Kamala?
Melania, in her soon to be released book, had a strong pro choice statement: wonder who she’s voting for?
For many of us the election is not on the agenda, baseball, football, for many men, dominate. The mundane realities of marriage and parenthood, taking care of the kids, you’ll vote, you might decide for whom as you enter the polling place.
In spite of endless sport team and individual player statistics you can’t, with any degree of certainty, predict winners.
Only one polling is accurate, the one on November 5th, and some will challenge the outcome of that poll
Ed in the Apple: Blogging on the Intersection of Education and Politics Title 
There is too much emphasis on the “horse race” nature of the election. Polling may be useful for campaigns to check on whether their message is landing with voters, but the continual discussion of these results and speculation on what they means has displaced any meaningful discussion of policies and the implications of choosing one over another, The media is geared to report sound bites and the polls provide one. That is not what the voters need. The media is repeating their errors of 2016, creating false equivalences and “sane washing” the disjointed ramblings of a 78 year old would be tyrant.
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Thanks for your, as usual, thoughtful comment, “policy” debates mask deep seated bias, the “undocumented,” or “illegals” mask bias, prejudice or just plain racism. When Joan and I married in 1970 3% of marriages were interracial, today almost 30%, however; for too many, deep-seated racism results in a masked neo-Nazi, whether there are enough to determine the election outcome we’ll find out, polling only increases “clicks” and enriches polling companies
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