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Low income people who watch a lot of broadcast television and are bombarded by commercials.

what the Democratic leadership misunderstood is that more votes is better.

I’m sure you‘re already marinating on it but I’d love to read your thoughts on the takeaways from this miss at some point

Still +19, 1 below her benchmark I expect an AES win of 3% or less mind you but I'm doubtful it's close to that +7

Benchmarks are just "what numbers do we think we need, and can get, in each area to win by 1 vote"

Yeah the analysis I’m seeing is that Stevens is underperforming almost across the board. I don’t think the race is going to be all that close at the end.

Now that NYT is including the Detroit suburbs in their benchmark analysis, neither candidate is ahead. But that still doesn't include Detroit itself or midsize cities, so I'm not sure how useful this benchmark analysis is at the moment...

Nowadays yes, because younger people increasingly won't answer them and voters also lie more often when talking to pollsters than they did 10 or 20 years ago.

The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day.

Michigan has no-excuse absentee voting that’s heavily used by middle-aged voters, and less so the elderly. I worked at a voting precinct in Oakland County & a sizeable portion of our voters today were 50+.

why big miss happen

@chaznuttycombe.bsky.social's poll on WIGOV is going to be especially interesting now going into next week

I'm new to following this race. Who did the polls have winning?

That's the average miss in primaries, not overall bsky.app/profile/gell...

Pretty infamously elected Bernie Sanders in the primaries against Clinton. Nobody saw that coming. Even me. And I voted for him.

Yeah, I think it’s less that it’s hard to poll and more the local guys are meh.

(no one real, anyway)

And since Stevens is pro all those things too, except Trump and probably the bridge but who knows maybe Moroun pays her too, she can’t argue against any of them.

Yup, he’s vulnerable on the bridge. He’s got his own foreign policy weaknesses (too hawkish) and lost two years ago when Trump carried the state. He’s not a great candidate but the Dems have to hit him hard.

He used to be somewhat normal, but now he has to bend the knee 👅 🥾

Oh, one of those. Trump does not keep agreements or his word. From the outside I just saw corruption and dishonor and I just don’t get how people excuse it.

they do you can for example search for Sayeds on the topic

Crap junk polls

Never wanna hear "polls with a 500-1000 sample size are accurate" ever again.

Gee, who knew there was "strategically designed" polling out there? (A lot of online people)

Fair. But still, breathe. [My personal theory is that the Anne Seltzer poll was actually right at the time, it was the Harris later campaign pivots that ultimately tanked her campaign.]

Fuck. AIPAC money worked.

Edit: oops unless you meant why they missed in which case personally I would argue bad rural polling continues to cause massive issues and they weight urban areas poorly. (don't live there anymore but lived in Michigan my whole life until relatively recently)

Michigan has an open primary.

The polls were paid for by Abdul allied PACs.

I think there were way more undecided voters leading right up to the election. Voters like AES’s message but may have been on the fence thinking he can’t beat Rogers in the General. Ultimately, I think more undecideds went for AES

The polls had AES winning by 12-15 points. Right now he’s winning by 3-4. There is a ton of outstanding vote left, though, so I don’t think we’re going to know who wins or by how much until morning. Michigan is not particularly fast at counting.

This pairs with the "generational wealth" being acquired by democratic consultants according to Paul Rivera's report, that we still haven't seen.

Confirmed. El-Sayed won.

Interesting that it was a miss favoring the lefty side, given that it's conventional wisdom that young people don't respond to polls, and that polls underweight people with less consistent voting histories

How was the polling off? I thought Sayed was slightly favored for the last few weeks?

Polling on primaries

It’s true. You just can’t underestimate how much voters love an AIPAC candidate. At least El Sayed made them pay hard for the right to anoint a candidate this time.

Those polls are a joke; they lead people to form a mistaken opinion about things.

Then, there's also this: "voter turnout in Michigan's August 4, 2026 primary appears to be significantly higher than anticipated and outpaces previous election cycles."

I’m beginning to wonder if the data is correct, but is the analysis of the data flawed. All those polls that broke for El-Sayed seemed to track with the in person election vote patterns. Maybe we should consider adjusting how samples are weighted to adjust for mail vs in person voting.

I've been getting text polls, which I actually like better and I have filled out a few.

Polling is hard, no reason to believe the pollsters were working in bad faith

Polls are weapons. They slant coverage for media and for a lot of voters. This is doubly true in primaries where voters are often being strategic. It's why it's made me nuts that there was almost no polling for 3 months in the Wis Guv primary. And the candidates especially don't seem to get this.

All of this! 👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽

Bluesky isn't real life. Apparently some need to hear that.

Michigander here. This is absolutely correct. ✅ online has no chill.

I saw the same thing with the Texas primary. WWIII online, my friends IRL from Texas were basically like "I like both of them 🤗"

Rather, answered them*

I think this is a stretch. Anecdotally, but my ballots didn't arrive until pretty close to the weird press conferences. I can't imagine a lot of people filled theirs out and return them in that short window. Definitely not 10-12% worth.

Polls ask if you have already voted and who you voted for, so no.

Clearly the only reason the lady that runs away from people who ask her legitimate questions could be losing is because of some scary brown Muslim conspiracy to fake polls

A poll is a snap shot and they are often wrong. This is not new.

Polling error or voter suppression?

Ugh

polling is all they have. Interviewing candidates or actual voters takes effort and we can't have that, now, can we?

Or that particular campaign was lying

‘😳

“Electability” is a nonsense word. Stop using it.

the mistake was listening to The Daily in the first place.

The first issue here is going anywhere near the Daily in our year of the lord 2026

Yes!!!!

Marked Safe from electability takes

Fair, but on this one I'm not even tempted.

Current President kinda makes the point 100x over doesn’t he

Fake polls to manipulate the voters

I studied the daily habits of 100 m̶i̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶a̶i̶r̶e̶s̶ elected politicians. This is what every one of them had in common

My electability take is that I am so much better at judging who I want than I am at judging who is electable that I only use the most obvious electability heuristics in voting (e.g. no third party candidate is likely to become POTUS).

Amen.

I'm certainly chuffed to never have to see an inkling one ever again in my life. I'm certain this primary will do the trick.

Tell that to @nathankalmoe.bsky.social

McMorrow dropped Out before the election.

There’s a reason I ignore all polls.

If everyone would just decide well in advance (a) whether they will vote and (b) for whom they are going to vote and then did not change that decision as the election approaches, and certainly not on Election Day, it would be SO much better for people who want the polls to be cleanly predictive.

Possible shy Stevens voters.

Wonder if people are more honest if they know the polling is being done for financial, not political reasons.

undecided voters probably

pollsters afraid of cities

We will not get any decent information until September after the primary smoke clears

People who continue to put stock in polling results in 2026 are morons.

I don't think a lot of people have adapted to the decline in number of high quality polls over the last decade. 2016 vs 2024 was night and day, and primaries just don't have the resources for repeated polls with variability this high.

You know they are going to just improperly discount AES’s general election poll numbers as a result right?

As Dennis Kucinich once said, "Well, you know, I'm electable if you vote for me."

It could be that the polls were that far out, but couldn't it also be that undecideds broke for Stevens in the final days?

I have a gut feeling it was absentee ballots and early voting from when Haley Stevens was leading but before the Walter Masterson incidents where she literally would shut down campaign events thus creating a massive implosion and regretful voter base in the polls who already casted ballots.

This is why you always run like you're behind by a few points, a polling miss this bad is inexcusable and makes a progressive upset seem less impressive when polls had them winning by double digits. Hopefully Abdul wins, but it will be interesting to read the post election analysis regardless.

Nailed the McMorrow number, though 🤣

Was this a polling miss? I thought El-sayed was never polling higher than mid to low 50s. It seems like there were just a lot of shy stevens voters.