CMV: 2024 General election polls are useless

I think that there is too much stock being put into Biden v Trump polls, and that the results will deviate significantly from the final outcome. <br><br>Presidential election polls are useless because of the nature of the 2-party system. Unlike a race which has multiple candidates, the Presidental election is between 2 candidates and their parties. <br><br>On one side, you have Democrats. The Democratic party is basically a coalition of parties. Democrats aren't a cohesive group, they work for their own factions first (the progressive, the moderate, etc). Look at the primary, and who ran. Buttigeig, Yang, Warren, Harris, Sanders, et al all ran for the democratic nomination, with no real threat of a third party run from any of them. Democrats tend to coalesce around their nominee, even if they don't like them. The Democratic party is basically whatever their coalition can agree on, and seek to appease their members. <br><br>Republicans, on the other hand, have a very different approach. With a few exceptions (Paul, etc), they tend to be relatively monolithic in their beliefs, with little ideological diversity within the party. <br><br>Polls can accurately measure support for the Democrats, because you can poll the coalition. It's very difficult to poll support for the Republicans, because even if you don't like Trump, you still support him because he is a Republican. This means that polls are going to be biased towards the Democrats because it will reflect dissatisfaction for Trump. <br><br>This means that polls will not be accurate, even if they say something like Biden 55% and Trump 45%, Democrats will still have to coalesce around Biden, while Republicans won't have to get together behind Trump. <br><br>Disclaimer: I don't like either Biden or Trump. <br><br>EDIT: I'd like to clarify why I think polls are useless in the general election. Polls are useful for many things, like primaries, figuring out how popular something is, etc. However, in the general election, when you are basically choosing one of two candidates, the polls are less useful. A poll in the general election doesn't take into account the fact that many people will vote out of party loyalty. One can dislike Trump, and say they will vote for Biden, but still vote for Trump because they are a Republican. Further, even if Trump is disliked, most Republicans won't vote for Biden in the general election. <br><br>This means that polls are inaccurate. If someone says they won't vote for Trump, the poll will still record them as being for Biden (since that is who they said they would vote for). But when it comes time for the election, they will vote for Trump. Since polls don't take that into account, I think they are basically useless in the general election.