So the biggest issue on polling is that it’s a broken system. It relies on all people to answer when asked, and what we’re seeing is people flat out aren’t doing it. Think about it. When’s the last time you answered an unknown number, and if that number wasn’t something you were expecting (like your car repair person telling you your vehicle was ready) did you stay on the line?
This same kind of thing is popping up when we look at polling for the primaries and then see the actual voter data. They haven’t been lining up for a while.
Think back to 2022. The media, for months, was saying there was going to be a red wave election. Polling was supporting this as well. And… they had a measly 5 seat majority.
I think people are putting way too much faith in polling the past few cycles, because something fundamentally changed in how people interact with them.
If you look at the underlying metrics for this election, it shouldn’t be anywhere near to being close. Multiple state republican parties are literally bankrupt, the primary demographic of the GOP is dying due to old age, and they are running a convicted felon.
You also have stuff like trump paying for biased polls. Are we really going to think that other people; didn’t know about this and are now doing it as well?
It just doesn’t make any sense, and of course our corporate owned media flat out refuses to be the 4th wall and be objective in their reporting. It’s infuriating.
Approval is not the same as “won’t vote for”, and even if it was, if enough of the other guy’s base won’t vote for him an unpopular person can still win. There’s nothing incompatible about an unpopular candidate leading in polls. Whoever wins this election will have a net-negative approval rating.
I also question whether or not we’ll ever see significant, sustained net approval of a President in the internet/social media age. Information is so decentralized and echo chambered now that there will simply never be a shortage of media describing why President ______ is bad and everyone is poor and in mortal danger.
I mean you can still have a low ass approval rating and best an opponent who has an even lower approval rating. Two things can be true at once. People people can dislike Biden, and dislike the other guy more.
Yeah, I was texted the other day to fill out a survey and didn’t even reply with the “stop to opt out”. Just, leave me alone. I’m not excited for Biden but I’m going to do what I need to do. That won’t show in any polls.
Yeah like, most people have shit to do. I’m excited to vote for Biden again actually (he did get a lot of good stuff done with an extremely tight congress), and sure there are things he 100% did that I’m not on board with, but that’s everything. You’re never going to get 100% of what you want, but he’s the closest I’ll get so lets do it!
It’s just very frustrating how they’re framing the race this cycle. They completely ignore trumps many disqualifiers while talking about polling that, by all rights, he’s paying for bad results again.
IMHO, I think the bigger issue is that people don’t understand statistics. They see a poll that says Trump has a 25% of winning, then when Trump wins, they think the poll is wrong. That’s not how statistics works.
That means if you held the same close election four times, Trump would win one.
People mock the polls, but I wonder how many of those people actually took a basic GE statistics 101 glass.
For random events, that’s true. But we are able to poll people before the event to see how it will turn out. With a big enough sample size, you’re able to get pretty close to actual results. After all, the election itself is just one big poll, not a die roll.
I say this as someone who went to school for this stuff and does a lot of surveying and statistics daily.
This doesn’t work when you’re comparing things that are going to be neck and neck. In order forecast with very high confidence, with something that is neck and neck, you need a huuuuge sample size and absolutely perfect surveying conditions.
The reason polls have been a toss up lately isn’t because the polling is bad. The problem is that the big races were also ways going to be nail biters, and we’re looking at the odds that a race will be 1% one way or another.
The good polls have been pretty damn close to the final vote percentages numbers. The problem is that the variance needed to swing a win right or left is absolutely minuscule. We’re often talking about percentages that are less than 2%, or less than 1%.
I’m not mocking polls here. I’m saying that if you have a sizeable population of people that refuse to participate in them, even if you get to a statistically significant number of people, the poll will be off. trump was also found to have been paying for polls that were slanted towards him to be put out there.
So, if a candidate is using bad polls to flood the zone with bad results, and then on top of that you have a statistically significant number of people who refuse to participate in said polling, your data is corrupted, is it not? This is exactly how people can use statistics to lie to people.
So the biggest issue on polling is that it’s a broken system. It relies on all people to answer when asked, and what we’re seeing is people flat out aren’t doing it. Think about it. When’s the last time you answered an unknown number, and if that number wasn’t something you were expecting (like your car repair person telling you your vehicle was ready) did you stay on the line?
This same kind of thing is popping up when we look at polling for the primaries and then see the actual voter data. They haven’t been lining up for a while.
Think back to 2022. The media, for months, was saying there was going to be a red wave election. Polling was supporting this as well. And… they had a measly 5 seat majority.
I think people are putting way too much faith in polling the past few cycles, because something fundamentally changed in how people interact with them.
Right? Just a few days ago reported that Biden was winning battleground states because of felon.
Precisely.
If you look at the underlying metrics for this election, it shouldn’t be anywhere near to being close. Multiple state republican parties are literally bankrupt, the primary demographic of the GOP is dying due to old age, and they are running a convicted felon.
You also have stuff like trump paying for biased polls. Are we really going to think that other people; didn’t know about this and are now doing it as well?
It just doesn’t make any sense, and of course our corporate owned media flat out refuses to be the 4th wall and be objective in their reporting. It’s infuriating.
The media doesn’t get clicks when the race isn’t close. So they do everything they can to portray it as close.
Without a doubt. It’s very frustrating isn’t it?
Approval is not the same as “won’t vote for”, and even if it was, if enough of the other guy’s base won’t vote for him an unpopular person can still win. There’s nothing incompatible about an unpopular candidate leading in polls. Whoever wins this election will have a net-negative approval rating.
I also question whether or not we’ll ever see significant, sustained net approval of a President in the internet/social media age. Information is so decentralized and echo chambered now that there will simply never be a shortage of media describing why President ______ is bad and everyone is poor and in mortal danger.
Obama was pretty firmly in the internet age, and left office in his second term with an approval rating of 55%.
I mean you can still have a low ass approval rating and best an opponent who has an even lower approval rating. Two things can be true at once. People people can dislike Biden, and dislike the other guy more.
Yeah, I was texted the other day to fill out a survey and didn’t even reply with the “stop to opt out”. Just, leave me alone. I’m not excited for Biden but I’m going to do what I need to do. That won’t show in any polls.
Yeah like, most people have shit to do. I’m excited to vote for Biden again actually (he did get a lot of good stuff done with an extremely tight congress), and sure there are things he 100% did that I’m not on board with, but that’s everything. You’re never going to get 100% of what you want, but he’s the closest I’ll get so lets do it!
It’s just very frustrating how they’re framing the race this cycle. They completely ignore trumps many disqualifiers while talking about polling that, by all rights, he’s paying for bad results again.
IMHO, I think the bigger issue is that people don’t understand statistics. They see a poll that says Trump has a 25% of winning, then when Trump wins, they think the poll is wrong. That’s not how statistics works.
That means if you held the same close election four times, Trump would win one.
People mock the polls, but I wonder how many of those people actually took a basic GE statistics 101 glass.
For random events, that’s true. But we are able to poll people before the event to see how it will turn out. With a big enough sample size, you’re able to get pretty close to actual results. After all, the election itself is just one big poll, not a die roll.
I say this as someone who went to school for this stuff and does a lot of surveying and statistics daily.
This doesn’t work when you’re comparing things that are going to be neck and neck. In order forecast with very high confidence, with something that is neck and neck, you need a huuuuge sample size and absolutely perfect surveying conditions.
The reason polls have been a toss up lately isn’t because the polling is bad. The problem is that the big races were also ways going to be nail biters, and we’re looking at the odds that a race will be 1% one way or another.
The good polls have been pretty damn close to the final vote percentages numbers. The problem is that the variance needed to swing a win right or left is absolutely minuscule. We’re often talking about percentages that are less than 2%, or less than 1%.
I’m not mocking polls here. I’m saying that if you have a sizeable population of people that refuse to participate in them, even if you get to a statistically significant number of people, the poll will be off. trump was also found to have been paying for polls that were slanted towards him to be put out there.
So, if a candidate is using bad polls to flood the zone with bad results, and then on top of that you have a statistically significant number of people who refuse to participate in said polling, your data is corrupted, is it not? This is exactly how people can use statistics to lie to people.
Calls, rarely. Texts and Facebook polls, every chance I get (though I don’t use Facebook that much any more).