Well, certainly ANYTHING released by the mainstream media needs both wariness & a fine tooth comb.
Two years ago, in advance of the 2014 midterms and in conjunction with the release of FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings, I wrote an article headlined “Is The Polling Industry In Stasis Or In Crisis?” It pointed out a seeming contradiction: Although there were lots of reasons to be worried about the reliability of polling — in particular, the ever-declining response rates for telephone surveys — there wasn’t much evidence of a crisis in the results pollsters were obtaining. Instead, the 2008, 2010 and 2012 election cycles had all featured fairly accurate polling.Has the reckoning come for the polls since then? The evidence is somewhat mixed. The 2014 midterm elections were not a banner year for pollsters, with most polls showing a statistical bias toward Democrats (reversing their statistical bias toward Republicans in 2012). As a result, there were a handful of major upsets by Republican candidates, along with a few near misses. Still, the error in the polls was reasonably in line with historical norms. It wasn’t the disaster that pollsters have experienced in other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Greece, or even in previous U.S. midterm elections, such as 1994 and 1998.
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If the 2014 midterm polls were a little better than reputed, however, the reverse might be true of the 2016 presidential primaries polls. Importantly, the polls (and even more so, the polling averages) had a good track record of calling winners, with the polling front-runner winning the vast majority of the time. Furthermore, the polls caught wind of Donald Trump’s popularity among Republicans early in the cycle, even as a lot of journalists (including, uhh, yours truly) were deeply skeptical about his chances. But the margins were often pretty far off, especially in the Democratic race, with Hillary Clinton often blowing away her polling numbers in the South and Bernie Sanders often doing so elsewhere in the country. Furthermore, although there weren’t many upsets, at least one of them — Sanders’s win in Michigan — was historically epic.
Don’t take our word for it, though: We’d encourage you to explore the data for yourself...
The State of the Polls, 2016
So, Elz, lament the polling data all ya want...
As the above excerpt says, even as some 2014 polling data in certain races was flat-out wrong...
...& even as less available cell-phone #s has transformed the collection of polling data...
...(a) "the [2014] error in polls was reasonably in line with historical norms"
...&, (b) as it applies to 2016, "the polls caught wind of Donald Trump’s popularity among Republicans early in the cycle, even as a lot of journalists (including, uhh, yours truly) were deeply skeptical about his chances."
The Trump supporters can't have it both ways: Having trumpeted the early Trump data accumulating to his favor, now dismiss the Trump polling data just because it doesn't fall into line with the way they wish it would trump the Clintonians.
I think EVERY group will promote the stuff that makes them sound good and ignore the stuff that don't;
even ELSIE...