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

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

#521

Post by chmod600 »

codegrappler wrote: post #476
chmod600 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to the conclusion that it makes sense (morally, though perhaps not persoanlly) to broadcast your viewpoint when it is generally suppressed, but not when it is already a mainstream viewpoint. A blue message in redville makes it more acceptable to discuss and is an opportunity for communication and progress; likewise for a red message in blueville. But if you are broadcasting a blue message in blueville, you…

I wish I could do this better. It still scares the heck out of me to say something that could be construed as even remotely redville when I’m in navy blueville. I’m sure others feel the same way in the opposite circumstance.

I think almost everyone would feel the same way. I know I would. We should reflect on why we feel more like this than in 2010.

Persoanlly, I think it has to do with the moral realm vs the practical realm. We think of morality as a good thing, but it is more about absolutes than goodness. As we bring more things into the moral realm -- who you vote for, for example -- it shuts down reason, discourse, nuance, and understanding.

Traditionally, the moral realm is about what you do. There's not much value in society discussing murder and whether its a good thing to do or not; and there's a lot of potential harm. If murder becomes an issue of nuance, people can rationalize it too easily and you get chaos.

Now, I feel like our thoughts are becoming part of the moral realm, and that's a bad thing. There's no chance to discuss and learn together if one person thinks that the other is evil. It also means that it's easy for an otherwise good person to do horrible things because they feel that they are attacking evil.

I don't meam to say that moralization is new. It has certainly happened in the past, say with McCarthyism, or the Spanish Inquisition. But it does feel like the pendulum is swinging in the direction of everything-is-a-matter-of-good-and-evil.

And frankly, it seems like most of this moralization of thought is coming from the left. There's still some socialism-is-evil sentiment on the right, but that was pretty minor this cycle compared with the Trump-is-evil sentiment.

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

#522

Post by hinkley »

evo_9 wrote: post #104

Who replies honestly to political question to random strangers? I know I don't. What's the benefit of letting anyone know where you stand politically at this point? None. It's much more likely - no matter which side you're for - that the person asking could have an adverse reaction. Things are just way too polarized now, not sure how that can change, but that's how it is. I mean outside friends/family I simply take a…

When I was younger and just becoming politically aware, I recall stories of people confessing that they told their family they voted one way when in fact they voted another.

There are very few consequences for dissembling, lots of consequences for being transparent, and in fact the ability to lie about your vote is essentially built into our current voting mechanism as a right. I dabbled in electronic voting for a bit, and the open source folks were struggling with this quality. Being able to disavow an act is called 'repudiation', and many crypto systems have nonrepudiation as a feature. But you also need to prevent ballot box stuffing, so you need a way to assert that John Smith voted, but not who he voted for.

But keeping this feature means that anyone with an IQ above 80 can't be coerced or bribed into voting for a particular person. You give me $200, blackmail, extort, or otherwise encourage me very strongly to vote for Hitler, but I can just vote Ficus and tell you I voted Hitler.

Some rando walking up to you after voting, or worse, before, how do I know they're asking in earnest instead of with some agenda? I'll say anything I can think of to get away from them as fast as possible.

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

#523

Post by apta »

mastazi wrote: post #438
apta wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why that is the case, and I would like to hear if anyone has an answer. Cancel culture and SJW mobs.

Cancel culture is often in the back of my mind because I work in tech, however what I said above was not only referring to the workplace, so the question still stands. Also, you are not really giving an answer, because if the cause was "cancel culture" then the next question would be why cancel culture works that way and not the other way around.

Yes that's a valid follow up question. I came across this discussion earlier: https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/comments/js7bk8...

There are some good answers there.

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

#524

Post by ineedasername »

colinmhayes wrote: post #382
ineedasername wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not if the hypothesis of the article is correct: They have lower social trust & cooperation metrics, and are disinclined to answer any polls. As for why it started with Trump, there could be a few reasons, all speculation on my part: He may be attracting people who didn't vote much before, and these new voters are the sorts of people who have lower trust etc., and so don't answer polls. Personally though, I think…

Yea I agree, they need to find a new term I guess because it seems pretty clear that this is what's been happening to me at least. I guess my question was more along the lines of who doesn't think this was the issue? Seems so obvious that his conspiracy theory squad won't want to talk to pollsters. Plus energized dems are more willing than usual to talk. The 1% response rate is a crazy number. How could they possibly…

There's a few ways to infer whether or not a 1% response rate is truly representative, or if there's some selection bias with responders responding because they're different that non responders beyond that one simple binary behavior.

My job is basically data analyst/programmer, but I have a decent background in research of this sort (not politics, surveys and qualitative research) and occasionally have to conduct surveys. It often falls to me, or I insist on it, because practically no one knows how to write quality survey questions that aren't leading questions that bias the response.

For example, if you wanted an opinion on a new food product, someone that doesn't know how to ask a neutral question (or is purposely rigging the survey) could ask "How much do you like these french fries? 1) Fantastic 2) Very Good 3) Good 4) Okay 5) Awful. Those answers are front stacked with positive answers, only one negative answer, and no neutral answer. If someone doesn't believe they're awful, they have no choice but to answer "okay".

In any case, one common method I use to measure the presence of responder selection bias is a followup communication to non-responders 1-2 weeks later to nudge them to take the survey. The hypothesis is that people who did not response initially, but do respond when prodded again, will represent a middle point between initial responders & complete non-responders. If that middle point is not statistically significant in their responses that the original responders, I can infer that non-responders are less likely to be a group that would answer differently if had bothered to answer.

No, this is absolutely not a perfect method. More robust methods are needed to further reduce uncertainty: Ethnographic & other qualitative studies can help. Talk to responders to find out what they responded and consider the inverse. e.g., if they say "this is a really important election we have to get Trump out and I want to spread the word so it was important to share my opinion" that should make you question whether Trump supporters would feel the same way about responding.

To really get to non-responders, you need more time & more resources. Find them and pay them to talk to you. It's not uncommon to reward research participants who certainly wouldn't participate otherwise.

Again, none of these are perfect, they just inch you close to greater understanding a little bit at a time.

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

#525

Post by chillacy »

smnrchrds wrote: post #283
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but when some random pollster calls me, what do I get out of it if the parties can allocate their resources more effectively? That's not anywhere on my list of concerns. It lets you campaign more effectively? Great, go bother someone else.

If political parties see, through polls, that their platform is not resonating with the populous, they will change their platform and policies. Decisions about future direction of the parties are not made in a vacuum. Polls are one of the feedback methods determining them.

Yea as someone who lives in a non swing state it occurred to me that being polled would probably give my options the more influence than my actual vote.

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

#526

Post by rayiner »

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…

Trafalgar got the margin much better than 538 in key states. Your list excludes several that 538 thought would be close but weren't: Ohio and Texas, and which ended up being close but 538 thought would be a blowout: Wisconsin. Putting those states in, you get Trafalgar erring in favor of Trump by 1.76 points, while 538 erred in favor of Biden by 4.37 points: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSulsnjJ96c2...

The final count will change these numbers a little bit, but I think Trafalgar will have gotten closer to the final result in these key states by 2.5 points on average.

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

#527

Post by rkuykendall-com »

smabie wrote: post #31
x87678r wrote: post #24

I think no one really knows what the different parties represent any more. Most people I know voted Republican were low-wage working people, where my highly paid educated friends voted Democrat. Isn't it supposed to be other way around? No wonder everyone is confused.

anecdotally, knowing some very rich people, they mostly voted for trump in 2016. Pretty much every single one voted for Biden or declined to vote this year. I voted for myself and have been getting a lot of shit for it for some reason.

I respect voting for yourself over voting third party. If you're going to vote for someone who can't win, at least make it the person you agree with the most.

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

#528

Post by rayiner »

Green_man wrote: post #514
zimablue wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number of states that you get wrong isn’t a great measure though right? If I call if for trump at 51-49 and you call it for Biden at 75-25 and Biden wins by 51-49 I was more correct than you were, to count “states called” is the wrong way to evaluate analysis in the same way that fptp is unrepresentatove of the popular vote, ironically.

I agree with you, and that's why i made effort to differentiate between margins vs winning. In my opinion, 2020's polls were a lot worse than 2016's, but because of Biden's much bigger lead (in the polls and in key states), the polling errors did not cross the threshold to be "wrong" in the winner take all system. Finally, there is an argument that even a Biden 75-25 call gives the correct outcome because each state…

They didn't just add a "shy Trump voter" factor:https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/another-pollster-sees...

They tried to come up with approaches to get around the very effect the article talks about: Trump voters don't answer survey questions. The main differences in methodology were making fewer assumptions about Republican turnout, larger sample sizes, and different survey techniques.

Trafalgar clearly missed some things: traditionally republican collar counties breaking hard for Biden. (My county didn't vote for Obama either time, but voted for Biden by 12, after voting for the republican governor a couple of years ago by 38.) But 538 had some insane misses this year in critical states like Wisconsin (off by 7.7), Ohio (off by 7.3), Florida (off by 5.9), etc. Finalizing counts in NY and CA isn't going to change those numbers--and Trafalgar wasn't analyzing them anyway.

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

#529

Post by boomboomsubban »

darawk wrote: post #471
mr_toad wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's not belittling them. He's supporting them and their cause, and offering course corrective advice so that they are better able to achieve their stated goals. Kind of like telling women that they shouldn’t venture out at night? For their own safety. Or to give another example, the recent arguments made that people shouldn’t publish cartoons that Muslims find offensive, for their own safety. In all three cases te…

He's not telling them not to exercise their rights. He's telling them not to protest violently . He is encouraging them to protest. He's encouraging those protests to be non-violent.

An impossible dream. 100% of protestors can be nonviolent and external forces, usually cops, can turn it violent.

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

#530

Post by Green_man »

rayiner wrote: post #526
Green_man wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Trafalgar got the margin much better than 538 in key states. Your list excludes several that 538 thought would be close but weren't: Ohio and Texas, and which ended up being close but 538 thought would be a blowout: Wisconsin. Putting those states in, you get Trafalgar erring in favor of Trump by 1.76 points, while 538 erred in favor of Biden by 4.37 points: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSulsnjJ96c…

I'll be interested to see the final count and compare on all states, but Trafalgar's issues are deeper than just deltas in my opinion. They had an arbitrary "shy trump voter" factor, which may be justifiable, but any "shy voter" effect is tautologically immeasurable (and thus just a guess on Trafalgar's part). They had weirdly consistent results where Trump was up by 3 points in lots of purple/blue states, which doesn't line up with the differences we saw in other polls and in the results (so far). I agree that the polling errors are significant in many of the mainstream models, even in the states that were called correctly. These deltas so far are worse than 2016, and should be looked into. But _if_ Trafalgar ends up with a lower delta over all 50 states when this is all finished, they still gave the wrong result in most of the key states that matter for the election. That's significant, because the polls are measuring 50 winner take all systems, and 538 told us 90% chance Biden win, while Trafalgar told us that Trump was favored in almost any state that was worth watching this year. That was wrong, and Trafalgar deserves criticism for it.
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