Thread by @whstancil

I deleted the tweets in question because people were taking the climate line as a critique of Biden, and it wasn't. But it's absolutely true that no one knows how to read an issue poll.

https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/1416781503573504011

People regularly cite polls saying things like "Biden's highest approval is on climate, his lowest is on immigration" to mean he should do more on climate. They also cite the same polls to mean he should do more on immigration.

And of course it's completely unclear whether the polls reflect voters responding to the precise policy actions taken by Biden, or reflect some larger structural factor like a tendency to approve of Dems more on environment and the GOP more on security, or reflect media messages.

If you're going to treat issue polls as some kind of core metric around which to guide messaging strategy, these are actually extremely important questions to figure out. But basically no one knows the answers. These critical distinctions are just handwaved past.

Anyway, the toxic centrist crowd hates me because I criticize Democrats, they literally don't care about anything else. They see people like me as of a kind with Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and Briahna Joy Gray, because to them everyone who criticizes Democrats is the same.

But the problems with issue polling and its incorporation into politics are endemic. No one understands what these polls really indicate or how they interact with voting outcomes. Everyone just blithely cites them as if the meaning is obvious, and it isn't.

If people like me raising concerns about something as dry as the meaning of polling data sets your teeth on edge, it's really a clue that you're practicing a politics that abhors any kind of critical thinking about the home team.