That troubling Trump supporter as "authoritarian" poll you're hearing about today - More proof that U.S. presidential polling is biased, unreliable and full of ideoological traps designed to prove... "something." But showing something once in a poll is not PROOF, just a one-time result. Reliable polling is getting the same/similar results over and over consistently thru objective means

The one weird trait that predicts whether you support Trump https://t.co/6LxPby3XGi via @POLITICOMag | AP Photo pic.twitter.com/8skUWDNIMG

— POLITICO (@politico) January 19, 2016

Always wished I had resources to put whole Myers-Briggs battery on my polls | Weird Trait Predicts Trump Support https://t.co/EwfQEWRFTA

— Patrick Murray (@PollsterPatrick) January 17, 2016

The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter 

And it’s not gender, age, income, race or religion.

By Matthew MacWilliams
1/17/2016
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533

It's not so surprising that such an ideological survey would first appear in Politico.
But it naturally leads to the questions not asked or mentioned, like...well...
Question: What's the one trait that predicts whether you're a Hillary supporter?
Answer: They are NOT interested in that answer.

(Though it once was, "And in the 2008 Democratic primary, the political scientist Marc Hetherington found that authoritarianism mattered more than income, ideology, gender, age and education in predicting whether voters preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.")
 

Politico is no more interested in revealing that than they are in knowing and publicly disclosing whatever the supposed one magic trait about supporters of Bernie Sanders is.

Especially if that were to be something like, oh, people who despite saying very liberal and progressive things in front of strangers and the news media, when it comes down to it, do NOT want to live near people who are similar to them, which is the most plausible answer one can infer from facts like Sanders' support being strongest in almost entirely 100% White enclaves around the country, something Hillary is currently exploiting in South Carolina with its large Black population.

In case you did not know, the only state in the U.S. with a lower percentage population of minorities than the state Sanders represents, Vermont, is Maine.

I know because I checked it out via the latest census info a few months ago, and even found similar numbers on ye olde Wikipedia, though the latter says Montana instead of Maine, two states that could not otherwise be more dissimilar from one another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-American_population

It doesn't bother me, per se, that people with particular biases have opinions and want to sound off on them, since everyone is free to believe whatever they want, however crazy or different from my own POV it might be. After all, it's a long campaign...
But what I hate seeing and find troublesome is the way this story is already being played up nationally as evidence of... well, "something."
But all it really is is a SINGLE snapshot in time.

It's like predicting the Miami Dolphins making the NFL playoffs every year based on them frequently beating the Patriots the past few years when they have been one of the best NFL teams. 
But in those years when they do beat the Patriots -almost always at home- they STILL fail to make the playoffs, don't they? (This year proved that all over again!)

 
Experienced football fans who have some real knowledge and historical perspective, like political junkies with the same qualities, know that one result is often an outlier. 

What you need to see is consistency (of effort) and results.  
Results plural.

Right now it's a theory that will not be PROVEN until it can be successfully replicated in multiple objective polls. And the article doesn't even have any links to check the poll numbers and questions yourself.  
WTF?

We seem to be at the point where someone who wants the public to believe something in particular about a candidate, and try to be seen as above reproach, and merely relying on cold hard numbers, can write something ascribing far-reaching significance...after just one poll.
Well, it doesn't seem like anything resembling polling Best Practices to me.

And now that you think about it, if this sort of designed poll is such a great thing, how come we never heard from the U.S. news media about the results of the same designed poll in 2008 and what it supposedly "said" about Hillary's supporters?

Why am I only hearing about it eight years later?

Here's more irony. T
oday, hours after seeing lots of tweets about the above, I saw this:

"As we see watching the presidential race, polling is very unreliable in many instances" https://t.co/0OVVjXN3G4

— POLITICO New York (@politicony) January 20, 2016

Just saying...

Dave 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

Emmy-award investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have ignored or are STILL ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting

CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have or still are ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring instead to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting

POLITICO

Attkisson: 'Outraged' by computer hacking

By Mackenzie Weinger

June 17, 2013  12:47 PM EDT

CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson on Monday said she is “outraged” her computer was hacked and called it “a very serious and disturbing matter.”

Attkisson told “CBS This Morning” she reported her concern that her work and personal computers were being compromised to CBS News management in January, and they hired a cyber security firm to conduct an investigation. CBS News on Friday said Attkisson’s computer had been compromised and accessed “by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions” in late 2012.

Read the rest of the column at: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/06/attkisson-outraged-by-computer-hacking-166414.html

The very troubling situating with Emmy-award winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computer has been completely ignored at Forbes.com and their Forbes Network Activity blogs which I subscribe to, a group that writes about everything under the sun, as well as by ProPublica and the supposedly media-savvy New York magazine, as the screen grab below from around 4:35 pm today shows.
Not even one.

Compare that to all the blog posts they have run the past year on alleged phone hacking by NewsCorp execs that actually happened in -yes- another country.
Yes, as far as they are concerned, it's very much a case of picking-and-choosing whose ox is to be gored.
But why would they ignore the story completely?
That's who they are.

Locally, the multi-month story which was first given attention by POLITICO's media columnist  Dylan Byers on May 21st 
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/sharyl-attkissons-computers-compromised-164456.html
was completely ignored until last Friday by the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, with genius editors at the Sun-Sentinel choosing to weigh-in with a weighty four-sentence report from Reuters.

Typical for the Sun-Sentinel the past few years under editor Dana Banker, they were both completely oblivious of the story and then after everyone else who has been ignoring the story finally went with it, they actually ran the worst-possible thing.
Four sentences.
That's why it's the Sun-Sentinel!

Nobody seriously expects real feats of journalism from them anymore.

More noteworthy is that the local CBS affiliate here in Miami, WFOR-TV, which has seen its news rating falter, is also completely ignoring the story thus far:
http://miami.cbslocal.com/search/?q=%22Sharyl+Attkisson%22