As Nov 8 nears, all of the polls will show Hillary with a commanding lead

[stopbush]

The truth is that she has a commanding lead today.

That doesn't stop outfits like Rasmussen and Quinapiac from issuing bogus, skewed poll numbers in an effort to help R candidates. They will continue to do so for as long as they can.

But once push comes to shove and the election is but days away, they will report the actual numbers that reflect a Hillary landslide, for the simple reason that they do not want to be labeled as the polling organization "that missed it by a country mile."

Propping up candidates is fine during the dog days of summer, but once it gets to the point where your polling organization's credibility is on the line, well, you do what you need to do. The only variable is the story you concoct to explain how your typically outlier poll suddenly aligned with everyone else.

[Dawson Leery]

1. Q has her up 48-43, yet trailing in so many swing states.

Both statements cannot be true.

[stopbush]

2. Exactly.

[Dawson Leery]

3. At 5 points, it is highly unlikely to win the popular vote, yet lose the electoral college.

Q is a Republican poll (Quinnipiac: R-New Haven)

[jamese777]

5. They're pretty balanced

Quinnipaic is a university's polling institute. It is not Republican. In the 2012 election cycle Quinnipaic's polls had a 2.3 point margin or error (3 points is average) and their statistical bias was 0.3% in Democrat's favor. That's pretty close to no bias.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/which-polls-fared-best-and-worst-in-the-2012-presidential-race/

538 blog's current ratings of pollsters gives Quinnipiac an A minus grade.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

[jpljr77]

4. Oh, come on. Are the LA Times and USC propping up Trump?

Because that poll has consistently showed Trump leading, and the paper endorsed Clinton today! Don't do the Republican thing and blame a bad poll on "bias."

The real truth here is that all of the polls are probably skewing their results right now by oversampling in anticipation of a massive wave of uneducated white male voters streaming down from the hills and out of the trailer parks to cast a vote for Trump. That's not going to happen and Hillary will win 300 EVs, minimum.

[stopbush]

6. Editorial pages and news pages at the same paper often paint very different pictures

of the same story.

Everybody knows that.

[jamese777]

7. What is more likely

is this far out from the election, polls can be all over the place. After a couple of debates, the polls will be a lot more accurately reflective of what's really going on but even then, there are always polls that are outliers.
For example, in 2012, Gallup released a poll on October 21st showing Romney up by six points on Obama. Obama won the election by 4 points.

[jpljr77]

8. Exactly right about that Gallup Romney poll.

I know that a lot of liberals -- myself included -- mocked Romney and the Republicans the day after for believing he even had a chance, and that their belief was just delusion. But it didn't come out of nowhere; there were late polls showing him with either a lead or tied.

Polls are weird and no single poll can be trusted. It's all about aggregated trends, which is why 538 and RealClear Politics are riding so high right now. They don't do polls, they simply aggregate them.

Truth is, Clinton had a huge lead heading into summer, Trump gained a ton after his convention, then she retook the lead after hers, she then started to slip for a bit and now is currently back on the upswing with a solid total 4% ish lead.

[Democat]

9. The LA Times poll has always favored Trump by at least 5%

Only low post count posters defend that poll around here.

[democrattotheend]

10. I look at it for trends

Because there are no good tracking polls anymore, sadly. But as an indicator of the popular vote it's probably not great, unless they are detecting something the other pollsters are not. I am a little afraid of this being like the Brexit vote, where most polls showed remain winning.

[pnwmom]

11. The Dornsife poll is a brand new and screwy online poll. I don't know why the LAT has chosen

to associate itself with it.