One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#501

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #431

rayiner wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vox euphemized Schor’s departure in a way that was highly relevant to the subject of the article. The issue isn’t that pollsters couldn’t quantify the problem, it’s that they didn’t even realize the problem existed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/02/shy-trump-... > Trump voters are not liars. As a Democratic pollster and campaign strategist, I feel strange typing these words. But it is required to deb…

I have a hard time believing your musings on culture are relevant to the topic of accurate polling when GOP-aligned pollsters, who firmly believed that Trump voters are less likely to answer polls and built that into their models, also missed badly.

Were there any other than Trafalgar? And did Trafalgar miss as badly as their competitors? My understanding was no.

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#502

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

zimablue wrote: post #489

kjeetgill wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the bulk of voters for Trump believe one of these things? He won a considerable number of votes.

It’s about 40%, look it up there’s polling on it, and that’s apparently probably over representing the more trusting/sane ones. Partly joking on the last part dunno how the populated those polls.

Yeah but polls routinely show that 4% of people think Obama is a lizard:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

Very often you do encounter polls these days where an absurdly huge number of people give hilariously trollish answers to pollsters, and then people take the resulting polls completely seriously. Pollsters try to include 'attention check' questions to catch basic issues like people just pressing yes to every question, but I do see very often polls that quite obviously can't match reality without anyone noticing it. There's something about maths that switches people's brains off.

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#503

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #208

kjeetgill wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the bulk of voters for Trump believe one of these things? He won a considerable number of votes.

I think a large proportion of Trump voters believe parts of QAnon-pushed conspiracy theories - especially that he is "taking on a Deep State conspiracy", and data indicates some support for that[1][2]. Surely they don't believe the "blood drinking paedophile" part though? It seems outrageous, and yet I know a bunch of people on HN believed PizzaGate back in 2016, so maybe I'm underestimating it. [1] https://www.usato…

You shouldn't be downvoted. Trump "taking on the deep state" isn't even a conspiracy theory, he literally made that a major part of his 2016 campaign. If deep state/swamp/etc is interpreted as a vague reference to the Washington/New York professional classes who populate government in huge numbers and tend to share very similar worldviews and beliefs, then calling this a QAnon pushed conspiracy theory would be a pretty grotesque distortion of the truth: conservative politicians have campaigned on rolling back big government for as long as there have been competitive elections.

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#504

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:38 PM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #360

adventured wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bulk of Trump voters are from rural areas, and tend to be less (or un-)educated. You're of course ignoring even worse problems on the Democrat side. The lowest education rates and highest drop-out rates in the US are not in rural areas, they're almost exclusively in the inner cities where Democrats tend to completely dominate the vote. Rural students at 87% are more likely to graduate from high school in four y…

I feel like your answer is sort of in bad faith. I live in an urban area, and people are quite concerned about the dropout rate (and more to the point that I think you're trying to imply but are dancing around for your own reasons, the racial achievement gaps). But I guess we put a different spin on it: we are ashamed of it, we should be ashamed of it, and we bring it up a lot in political races and on billboards and…

Worth noting here something important: when people talk about the "educated" city people, what they actually mean is people holding a university degree.

Holding a degree is to a large extent a proxy for age. It used to be that not many people went to university. The concept that ~everyone (or at least 50%) should go to university is a relatively new one. So the numbers of people graduating over time has shot up. Hence if you select the population by whether they have a degree, you'll end up with a lot of young people. And youth is quite correlated with voting left.

The notion that holding a degree makes you inherently smarter than someone who doesn't is an increasingly suspicious one to many folks, like me. There are too many people with multiple PhDs writing academic papers that have major errors in them, signing off on papers that have major flaws, changing their supposedly expert opinions overnight for political reasons, saying things on Twitter that are totally bizarre and so on. Do universities really make you "educated" or do they just make you unwilling to question another "educated" person's opinions even when obviously wrong? My experience is that older people, people in more rural areas and those without a degree are more willing to engage in common-sense reasoning and reject nonsensical claims even when they come from an educated member of the elite, whereas degree holders find it far harder (perhaps because it would devalue their own degree).

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#505

Post by csharptwdec19 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

appleflaxen wrote: post #480

flowerlad wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not bad people, but gullible people. Anyone that believes QAnon conspiracy theories such as Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey are raping and drinking the blood of kidnapped children in pursuit of the “fountain of youth” is gullible.

they are victims of a con, and they are members of a cult, but they are not gullible: they are scared. scared people are easy to manipulate, which is why terrorism (broadly defined, including 24/7 news cycle of calamity) is so effective at public control. By dismissing the individuals as flawed due to gullibility, you obscure the true phenomena, and make you and your peers more susceptible to it.

> By dismissing the individuals as flawed due to gullibility, you obscure the true phenomena, and make you and your peers more susceptible to it.

Yes, the continual polarization and forcing of picking a side. What's sad is even after the victory speech I'm seeing posts on FB from the 'winning side' that are further polarizing.

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#506

Post by nxmnxm99 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

Green_man wrote: post #325

nxmnxm99 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Trafalgar was one of the only polls calling a close race. In Trumps favour but close nonetheless. IIRC they were the only ones calling Florida going red. You’re being intentionally disingenuous saying they were equally as bad as the rest of the field predicting a blue wave.

Trafalgar almost certainly got more states wrong (counts aren't all finished, but we do know likely winners in all states). Other sites like 538 predicted all states correctly, except NC and FL (50.5%/48.8% and 50.9%/48.4% respectively, both predictions wrongly favoring Biden [1]). Meanwhile, Trafalgar's polls put Trump up in NV, GA, PA, AZ, and MI (from their website, all late Oct / early Nov polls [2]). Once counts…

You're not looking at the deltas.

> but it's important to note that the Trafalgar polls were mostly outliers, disagreeing with the consensus in many states

Well, yeah?

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#507

Post by nxmnxm99 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #473

nxmnxm99 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single demographic went further red than 2016 besides white men. There’s a reason for that.

I'm aware of that. But I don't see what that has to do with my point.

I was more reinforcing your point to the person you responded to.

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#508

Post by ineedasername » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #387

ineedasername wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they were saying the protests should stop. They made on observation about how the protests were perceived by others , and that perception, correct or not, influenced voting decisions.

This is changing it from "they said to stop" to "they said it was wise to stop," and the distinction basically only matters if you want the Democrats to win. You're saying the same thing either way.

No, it really doesn't. You're making an extra leap in logic that isn't true for all people. Just because the protests could lose some votes doesn't mean everyone who acknowledge that possibility wanted them to stop.

Pick any issue. A person can support the issue and recognize it may have negative consequences. From there I'm making the distinct that beliefs on the issue can go (at least) two ways: 1) The issue is too important for those consequences to take precedence over fighting for the issue. OR 2) The consequences are too high to continue fighting for the issue and it would be wise to stop.

You seem to be saying that someone who supports the protests & believes it will lose votes must automatically jump to #2. That doesn't follow. A person can believe the lost votes are not important enough to override the importance of the protests.

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#509

Post by ineedasername » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #472

boomboomsubban wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is changing it from "they said to stop" to "they said it was wise to stop," and the distinction basically only matters if you want the Democrats to win. You're saying the same thing either way.

Of course the distinction only matters if you want the democrats to win. The comment being discussed was made by a Democratic strategist.

Do you mean I'm a democratic strategist? I'm the one that proposed the the distinction, and I'm no political strategist. If that part of your comment was meant for me, then I really have no idea where you got that impression.

The comment I was responding to seemed to be saying that a person cannot acknowledge that the protests would lose votes without automatically believing the protests should stop, even though they might support the issues being protested.

That's not true. A person can believe-- about any issue-- that fighting for that issue may have negative consequences but also that fighting for it is still the right thing to do, that the cost of the fight is worth the consequences.

Re: One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

#510

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

ryathal wrote: post #494

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more recent, to be honest. When I started reading HN, it was very very libertarian (but mostly non-political). As it's grown bigger, it's started to reflect the demographics of software/data/professional people, with a bias towards the West Coast of the US. That's presumably what you mean by the liberal tech groupthink (note that disliking Trump does not make one a liberal, which is a mistake a lot of conserva…

How long ago was the dominant libertarian scene? I've been reading for about 7 years and it's definitely been heavy liberal with the occasional libertarian belief even back then. Since 2016 it's been full throated liberalism though.

2011 is when I started lurking here. i originally had disgruntledphd, but lost my password and there was no way to recover it (apparently you could contact paul graham, but I didn't know that) so I became disgruntledphd2.