how does everyone feel about the talking point which claims that voters who lack college degrees are under-polled, thus giving Biden an advantage in polls?
So, this is only a talking point if you don't understand how polls work. Polls aren't "you call 1000 people, get their answers, put that in a table, bingo-bango, out the door". Pollsters balance their responses for the expected breakdown based on previous behaviour & other poll answers. Polling isn't quite a science, there's an artform to it.
In 2016, pollsters did not analyze the educational breakdown, they did not correct for it, and they did not expect it. The entire industry fucked up. They corrected this based on exit polling. So while there is a chance that the lesser educated are lesser polled, reputable pollsters are appropriately correcting for this. It could impact the polls slightly (which is why polls have a margin of error) but it's really unlikely to have the same impact it did in 2016.
Of course, most people don't understand how polling works!
another talking point I've been seeing lately states that polls aren't as reliable as they used to be since people don't answer their cellphones when they see an unrecognizable number - and that since the advent and popularity of mobile phones, polls are no longer as reliable as they once were.
That's why correcting for responses is important. Which - let's be clear - that's something pollsters have always done, but it's even more important now. However, polls are still pretty accurate, because people actually
do answer their phones more often than you'd thing. Internet polling has become more prevalent as well.
Polls were extremely accurate in 2008 and 2012. When corrected for education, the numbers gathered in 2016 were correct (that is to say, the issue wasn't with data collection but with the methodology of presentation). There's no reason to think they are, en masse, wrong.
Unless you're a giant orange idiot trying to set the USA up for a coup.
