You are free to assume that an examination of the available data is no better than reading tea leaves. I would counter that with the suggestion that there's a reason we don't read tea leaves anymore.
Not really. Reading tea leaves performs a function. The human brain, particularly the right hemisphere in most people, and in those relative rare individuals who have access to it by various mystical techniques, tea leaves included, represent a profound amalgamation and synthesis of real world data collected by such individuals in the course of their daily lives. The tea leaves themselves are merely a canvas on which those impressions are superimposed. Polls are for linear minds have difficulty accessing themselves, regurgitating instead data by which they were programmed.
As a small example, the announcement by Trump that he would seek the Presidency caused me to experience the certain knowledge we were heading for a Black Swan event.
Thanks to the accumulation of human experience over eons of time many people know what to do when they see the tide going way out.
Put differently, I agree that polls give us a numerical count of how a cross section of people hopefully matching a group profile answer specific questions at a particular time and place. They give hard data as opposed to the softer and more psychologically oriented purposes of reading tea leaves. I wasn't trying to say the two are on the same level of predictive accuracy regarding a larger group regarding particular questions, only that the factors that go into how people answer the same question over time will change owing to changes in what people experience.
Trump hasn't won the Republican nomination. If he does, that fact alone can change things. People in general and Republicans in particular, like to unite behind a winner. This is one reason why losing politicians hate polling data.
Furthermore, we have yet to see the nature of how Trump and Hillary react one on one. The polls that develop if that contest happens will tell us much more than any poll taken today, so much so that I could care less what today's polls say. I'm reading the tea leaves according to my own intuition.
Again, when Trump announced the world pronounced him dead on arrival but I saw a wreaking ball on its way and I've been laughing my ass off ever since.
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