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It’s forecasting, not a prediction. If the weather forecast said there was a 28% chance of rain tomorrow and then tomorrow it rained would you say the forecast was wrong? You could say that if you want, but the point isn’t to give a definitive prediction of the outcome (because that’s not possible) it’s to give you an idea of what to expect.
If there’s a 28% chance of rain, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to rain, it actually means you might want to consider taking an umbrella with you because there’s a significant probability it will rain. If a batter with a .280 batting average comes to the plate with 2 outs at the bottom of the ninth, that doesn’t mean the game is over. If a politician has a 28% probability of winning an election, it’s not a statement that the politician will definitely lose the election.
Pollsters are compensating for that undercount of unlikely voters. 2016 they were low, 2020 still low but pretty close. They will have scaled it up to be more accurate this go around.
Except there’s a few snags there. In between the 2020 election and now, there was an insurrection, Roe v. Wade was overturned, Trump was convicted of crimes and indicted for many more. These are things that a statistical process can’t really account for when putting weight on how likely a respondant is to actually vote.
Trump lost in 2020. Do all of these events incentivize more people will turn out for him this time than in the last election? Or will less people turn out for him?
Every time something unprecedented happens it negatively impacts the ability for a scientific statistical process to predict the outcome. Science can’t predict things there’s no model for, and how do you can’t have a model for something you haven’t seen before. And a hell of a lot of unprecedented shit has happened. Maybe next time a convicted felon that tried to overthrow democracy runs in an election there can be accurate polling, but it’s not going to be the case in this election.
There really is no way to know what will happen on election day. So there’s else to do other than maximum effort until election day.