US Presidential Poling Data Reveal A Potential Validity Problem Do you want to know how people are likely to vote? Or, do you want to know who is likely to be the next president? What is the purpose of national polls? Those interested in politics get a glimpse of how people might vote in an election. But how valid are those data? What is not obvious is that the national polls are not the most valid measure of who will become president. That’s not because of problems of accuracy or methodology. It’s because in the US, the popular vote does not determine who will be the next president. Hence, national polls lack the level of predictive validity available in other polls. Validity refers to how well a measure measures what it is supposed to measure. Pollsters assess validity in different ways. The key question is what is the purpose of the poll? If the purpose is to reveal the likely votes of Americans, then a national poll has a degree of construct validity. If the poll is to p
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