I promised no more politics posts and I’m going to keep it. I won’t write about moral questions (freedom is better/worse than equality) nor debated ways of getting it (affirmative action is an effective/wasteful way to give equal chance to minorities). But I will write about visible, value-neutral things that affect politics – because everything does, even video game character diversity.

Look at this opinion survey vs real results of the German election (found it on a Hungarian article, but sourced as “ZDF”)

In 2015 Sept the migrants arrived to Germany en mass and in 2016 New Year’s eve, there were mass abuse of women on the streets by migrants. These developments rightfully changed the views of voters, as evidenced by the changing party supports. Around 2016 May Germany stabilized and along with it the voter opinions.

Then – according to the surveys – things went crazy in 2017 Jan when nothing really happened in German politics and people swarmed to the self-identifying moderate-left-wing SPD, while self-identifying moderate-right CDU lost some voters and anti-immigration AFD lost half of their voters.

Then came the election in 2017 Sept and the results are exactly what was in the “stable” period of 2016 May-Dec, with the last weeks seeing rapid return to this value, undoing the 2017 Jan changes. There are two explanations:

Despite nothing happening in Jan, lot of people changed their party preference, only to change their minds in Sept for – again – no reason. People never changed anything, they kept their old preference, just the pollsters lied to boost the morale of their favorites (the liberal left) and push their enemies (the anti-immigration party) into despair.

Somehow #2 looks more believable for me and I wouldn’t bother reading any polls anymore. They are not simply inaccurate, but purposefully altered for hostile reasons. The best way is to consider them worthless crap and ignore.