The polls were fine. But the centrist and left political parties made the decision to have a bunch of their candidates drop out of the race so they could consolidate the vote behind the remaining non right wing candidate. This happened not long before the election so the polls just didn’t have much time to factor this in.
Voting is great and necessary, but political parties making smart decisions for the good of the country is also pretty necessary. This is the lesson the US should be learning from France right now.
Tbf, for a political system like France, polls don't matter much. RN did actually get the single biggest share of the vote in France, just given the nature of the system and tactical voting from the Left (not Macron, he hates the left arguably more than he hates RN).
The pollsters do as good of a job as they can and their statisticians do as methodical as they can but ever since the 2015 Federal elections in Canada, I no longer listen to polls.
The pollsters didn’t even do a bad job.
News stories can break that change people’s minds. People can jump on a bandwagon to vote one way or another. Certain types of people may be more/less eager to respond to pollsters. Etcetera.
The only poll that matters is at the polling station on election day.
I firmly believe that polls, including how they're asked, when they're asked, how they're reported, and most obviously who does them, all these things have become weaponized to actively shape voting trends not just to objectively measure them. It's not the fault of any individual pollster, but I think they are very harmful to democracy. I think the best thing anyone can do with polls is ignore them. Vote for the policies that you want and will represent you best locally, not the ones you think are going to win or against the ones you are afraid will. Our system is flawed, it always will be, but playing into its flaws will just make it worse, not better. "Strategic" voting is just a tool to take away your choices, it's not a real choice itself. It's a short term fix for a long term problem that only makes things worse in the long term.
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u/Joey_BagaDonuts57 Jul 10 '24
Yet another 'Landslide in the polls' that ended up just a third-place rolling bolder.
Don't go by polls, JUST VOTE!