Election Polls. Accuracy?

[Hurricane Rex]

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be a political statement but rather a discussion about how accurate are the polls, especially further out. This is not an endorsement of any candidate or ideology.

A lot of us has heard the news that Trump is trailing Biden/Sanders/Warren by a considerable margin, commonly up to 10 points. I then found out something about the polls in reelection campaigns since 1984. NOTE: I did not look prior to 1984.

June 1983: Mondale 49%, Reagan 39%. Result: Massive landslide for Reagan
June 1991: Bush 51%, Any democrat: 28%. Result: Clinton wins decisively
June 1995: Dole 48%, Clinton 44%, result: Clinton wins in landslide
June 2003: Bush had 10 point lead (edit: could not find exact numbers, only the headlines): result: Bush close election.
June 2011: Any Republican 48%, Obama 44%.

Moral of the story: Polls are more often than not inaccurate 16 months out during reelection campaigns.

Thoughts?

SM-J737T

[webny99]

Moral of the story: Polls are more often than not inaccurate 16 months out during reelection campaigns.

That exact point was stated on this week's fivethirtyeight.com politics podcast. So, yeah, polls should not be trusted at this stage.

[Scott5114]

While I appreciate the attempt to discuss polling methodology and accuracy devoid of individual candidates, anything directly relating to an election is still too likely to bring up political discussion. (Someone's not going be able to resist the bait of smugly posting "Well, obviously they're wrong, because X is going to happen!")

Sorry.