Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
DLFREEBIRD wrote:The other side of the coin of course, is potential voters may see that their candidate has a big lead and decided to stay home.
rfields5421 wrote:Most of the examples you have cited - the result was within the margin of error of the poll, so that cannot be considered failures of the system.
DLFREEBIRD wrote:I think people look at the polls, and decided they better get out and vote because their candidate of choice is behind. The other side of the coin of course, is potential voters may see that their candidate has a big lead and decided to stay home.
mke717spotter wrote:Although Trump has lost the election, the polls were still wrong to predict a landslide win for Joe Biden.
ltbewr wrote:It appears that the Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll was the most accurate national poll.with Biden winning by 4%, about his margins at this point in the counts.
https://news.yahoo.com/ibd-tipp-retains ... 00053.html
Apparently they are a conservative leaning poll that asks those most likely to vote and made demographic adjustments that were closer to real numbers. They also seem to be more in tune to economic factors, that many who felt financially secure were more likely to vote for Trump..
It is clear that modern political or other polling is way off due to factors discussed here and elsewhere and needs to make adjustments to make guesses taking into account economic factors.
scbriml wrote:mke717spotter wrote:Although Trump has lost the election, the polls were still wrong to predict a landslide win for Joe Biden.
We’re they? Biden is projected to win (trying to save some hurt there!) by the exact same margin that Trump did in 2016. Trump called his win “a landslide”
mke717spotter wrote:Most shocking was an ABC News/Washington Post poll released a week before the election that had Biden winning my home state of Wisconsin by 17 percentage points. I mean, don't you have to go to tremendous lengths to be that wrong so close to the election?
mke717spotter wrote:Florida - RCP average Biden +0.9, actual result Trump +3.4
KlimaBXsst wrote:People generally do not
donate money
to candidates
polling extremely low.
Polls have NOW been weaponized and are not useful for the purposes of truth any more.
Aaron747 wrote:
This statement is made in complete denial of how math works - averages are quite useful.
mke717spotter wrote:Although Trump has lost the election, the polls were still wrong to predict a landslide win for Joe Biden.
KlimaBXsst wrote:Aaron747 wrote:
This statement is made in complete denial of how math works - averages are quite useful.
Averages are useful when not used to distort or manipulate.
frmrCapCadet wrote:538 as usual has the best discussion on all of this. Nate Silver saw Biden winning somewhere between a cliff hanger and a landslide. So polls were saying just before the election just how uncertain things were.
scbriml wrote:We’re they? Biden is projected to win (trying to save some hurt there!) by the exact same margin that Trump did in 2016. Trump called his win “a landslide”
Aesma wrote:"in the US" should be added to the title, polls work fine in my country.
mke717spotter wrote:Although Trump has lost the election, the polls were still wrong to predict a landslide win for Joe Biden. It comes on the heels of the polling failure in 2016 when Trump shocked the pundits to claim the White House. We kept hearing over and over again after 2016 that they had fixed it. Well, its not fixed and I don't know how you fix it. Take a look at the aggregation of polling data in battleground states provided on the website RealClearPolitics:
Arizona - RCP average Biden +0.9, actual result Biden +0.3
Florida - RCP average Biden +0.9, actual result Trump +3.4
Georgia - RCP average Trump +1.0, actual result Biden +0.3
Iowa - RCP average Trump +2.0, actual result Trump +8.2
Michigan - RCP average Biden +4.2, actual result Biden +2.7
North Carolina - RCP average Trump +0.2, actual result Trump +1.3
Ohio - RCP average Trump +1.0, actual result Trump +8.2
Pennsylvania - RCP average Biden +1.2, actual result Biden +0.8
Texas - RCP average Trump +1.3, actual result Trump +5.8
Wisconsin - RCP average Biden +6.7, actual result Biden +0.7
Most shocking was an ABC News/Washington Post poll released a week before the election that had Biden winning my home state of Wisconsin by 17 percentage points. I mean, don't you have to go to tremendous lengths to be that wrong so close to the election? In terms of the popular vote, CNN's "Poll of Polls" had it 52%-42% for Biden. I know there are probably still some votes to be added to the final tally, but as of now Biden is only up 3.4 percentage points. And the published polling was wrong not just for the presidential race, but also for House and Senate races. In Maine, Democrats expected Gideon to win an easy victory (final result Collins +8.8), Tillis was behind Cunningham in virtually every poll in North Carolina (final result Tillis +1.7), and Lindsey Graham's race in South Carolina was considered a "toss up" (final result Graham +10.3). Democrats also lost seats in the House of Representatives despite widespread predictions that they would reinforce their majority in the chamber:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11 ... ction.html
"Cook projects Democratic gains of “10 to 15 seats as the likeliest outcome, with anything from five to 20 seats well within the realm of possibility.” Sabato’s Crystal Ball shows Democrats with net gains of 10 seats. And Nathan Gonzales of Inside Politics is slightly more bullish on the Donkey Party, projecting net Democratic gains of 14 to 20 seats."
Polls continue to drive coverage of US politics and yet their relevance as a predictive tool is in serious question. One could argue the media are complicit in this debacle. One analyst had even gone so far as to say that the polls were actually underestimating and not overestimating Biden's support. Journalists live in their bubbles in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and they are disconnected from American citizens. For the last four years we had been told that Trump's win was a fluke attributed to Vladimir Putin or James Comey. The failure of the polls leaves Americans with no reliable way to understand what people think outside of elections and this threatens the ability to make choices.
Vladex wrote:Polling is as fake as political punditry and fake news. It's all about projection and misinformation in order to create a fake ruling class.