Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
"Pollsters had major trouble spotting the surge of support for Corey Stewart in Virginia’s Republican governor’s primary this week, suggesting they still can’t figure out how to successfully survey Trump supporters."
Stewart was a Trump campaign manager and he was running on a tough immigration policy. The pollsters had his opponent (Ed Gillespie) ahead by as much as 27%. The Republican opponent (Gillespie) won by 1% (44 percent to 43 percent). That's a pretty big difference being off that much. Can't claim Democrat bias seeing as how both candidates were Republican.
You can read the guesses as to why they were off, again.
What do you think will happen in 2018 with the polling overall? Will they get their act together before the midterms or is political polling one of those dying occupations?
Stewart was a Trump campaign manager and he was running on a tough immigration policy. The pollsters had his opponent (Ed Gillespie) ahead by as much as 27%. The Republican opponent (Gillespie) won by 1% (44 percent to 43 percent). That's a pretty big difference being off that much. Can't claim Democrat bias seeing as how both candidates were Republican.
You can read the guesses as to why they were off, again.
What do you think will happen in 2018 with the polling overall? Will they get their act together before the midterms or is political polling one of those dying occupations?
A lot of people (for good reason) no longer trust polling, pollsters or polls. I've never been polled, but I have no desire to feed their machine ie: None of Your Business would be a stock answer. I have no desire to become a statistic, for my answers to be inputted into computer models so that poll driven messages can be spoon fed to me, for advertisers to send me information on products that I "may" be interested in, and no desire to tell the government anything more about me than is legally necessary for them to know. They can all go to hell.
Stewart was a Trump campaign manager and he was running on a tough immigration policy. The pollsters had his opponent (Ed Gillespie) ahead by as much as 27%. The Republican opponent (Gillespie) won by 1% (44 percent to 43 percent). That's a pretty big difference being off that much. Can't claim Democrat bias seeing as how both candidates were Republican.
You can read the guesses as to why they were off, again.
What do you think will happen in 2018 with the polling overall? Will they get their act together before the midterms or is political polling one of those dying occupations?
If you break out most of the 2016 polling it actually wasn't as terrible as it might seem. The national polling was pretty solid, and many of the state polling was fairly solid. However, there was certainly some bad state polling, and those happen to be in areas that swung the election. Not saying polling was exactly good in 2016, but looking deeper into it, the polling wasn't as bad as it might have seemed.
Regarding this particular race, trying to view how energized voters are can be hard to measure, and it is even tougher when turnout is quite low. Virginia doesn't have voter registration by party and as such has open Primaries, which can sometimes impact turnout on one side or the other.
Across the board turnout on the Republican side wan't very high, this was even more the case in the better educated and more affluent areas of metro Richmond and Northern Virginia. Other than Stewart's home county of Prince William, Gillepsie was expected to dominate these areas, and while he won them, they were closer than expected and he didn't run up the #'s there, in likely part due to how poor the turnout was.
Polling was also off a bit on the Democratic side as Northam won by a larger margin than expected. Part of what could have happened here is in part due to the lack of party registration and the open Primaries in the state, is some of those who were initially leaning towards going for Gillepsie in the GOP Primary instead went to Northam on the Democratic side.
You also have the caveat that there wasn't much polling (partly due to the fact Gillepsie thought it was in the bag) which makes it more difficult to spot changes and momentum.
I was called this week by someone doing a survey. They read off a list of disqualifying attributes. One was whether you worked for or someone in your household worked as a public employee. I noted my wife did. So they thanked me and hung up.
They had designed their survey to come to the conclusions they were looking for by disqualifying a certain segment of people.
Probably the biggest alt-right lie from the past year is "the polls were wrong". It reveals the lack of critical thinking with the Trump cult.
The polls were right. The most respected polls on Nov 8. gave Trump a 20-30% chance to win, and had the margin of victory at around 2-4%. It was a tossup. Hillary had 3 million more votes, which roughly corresponds with the polled margin. While the Trump victory was a surprise for both sides, it hardly challenged the pollster predictions.
Also, I am AMAZED that people reveal their lack of education by saying "the polls were wrong"; not understanding that polls are a measure of relative odds. If you win the lotto, and had a one in billion chance of winning, it doesn't mean the odds were "wrong". It means you don't understand the first thing about statistics. If Trump had a .0001% chance of winning, and he won, it STILL doesn't mean the polls are wrong, because it's relative odds, nothing more, nothing less.
Also, the results of one poll have NOTHING to do with the results of another poll. So the idea that a poll today on, say Trump's lack of popularity has no relationship to a poll about the Presidential election. It's just another indication that Trump voters (not all, but many) are less than educated.
Nate Silver said that Trump had no chance of even making it out of the primaries. Polls end up moving a lot in the last couple days. Not because people do. This many people are not changing their minds at the last minute.
Silver admitted he allowed his personal biases cloud his viewpoint. This happens regularly with polls.
Nate Silver said that Trump had no chance of even making it out of the primaries. Polls end up moving a lot in the last couple days. Not because people do. This many people are not changing their minds at the last minute.
At that time, it was a very reasonable prediction, no? Who thought Trump would win back in the primary season? Even Trump has admitted he saw no chance.
The consensus, by basically everyone, including Trump, was that Trump was doing what he did in past elections- run for a few months for publicity, and then drop out. No one predicted that the primary opponents would be so awful, and Trump's message so effective. Everyone thought Rubio would be the Rep candidate.
The polls that matter are on election day, and Silver was on-point for election day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pknopp
Silver admitted he allowed his personal biases cloud his viewpoint. This happens regularly with polls.
And? This has nothing to do with anything. Personal viewpoints have nothing to do with polls, which were right.
At that time, it was a very reasonable prediction, no? Who thought Trump would win back in the primary season? Even Trump has admitted he saw no chance.
The consensus, by basically everyone, including Trump, was that Trump was doing what he did in past elections- run for a few months for publicity, and then drop out. No one predicted that the primary opponents would be so awful, and Trump's message so effective. Everyone thought Rubio would be the Rep candidate.
The polls that matter are on election day, and Silver was on-point for election day.
No, that is NOT true. All the polls up to election day matter also. Many are designed to get people thinking a certain way.
Quote:
And? This has nothing to do with anything. Personal viewpoints have nothing to do with polls, which were right.
At that time, it was a very reasonable prediction, no? Who thought Trump would win back in the primary season? Even Trump has admitted he saw no chance.
The consensus, by basically everyone, including Trump, was that Trump was doing what he did in past elections- run for a few months for publicity, and then drop out. No one predicted that the primary opponents would be so awful, and Trump's message so effective. Everyone thought Rubio would be the Rep candidate.
The polls that matter are on election day, and Silver was on-point for election day.
And? This has nothing to do with anything. Personal viewpoints have nothing to do with polls, which were right.
Silver is a Republican, BTW.
I thought Trump would win back in the primary season. I did think that Rubio would be the GOP candidate, not EVERYONE did. I don't think the primary candidates were awful, I think people were tired of the same crap and wanted someone that was addressing the issues, thus Trump. I had been trying to get my congress people to address illegal immigration for 25 years!
I was not part of your basically everyone that thought he was doing it just for publicity, I think you are missing a BIG part of the picture. Trump had talked about running for President for a couple of decades before actually doing it.
What I learned about polling was that most often, polling reflects what the person/agency paying for the poll wants it to reflect, and that became clear watching FOX vs CNN early on.
Also, everyone that doesn't answer those polls or even if they do, no one knows what is actually being entered into the computer.
One can google "why polling is inaccurate" and find a ton of info on that subject.
It did not require one to be a rocket scientist to predict the win of Trump between "Trump" and "Never Hillary", pretty darn easy to call without polling!
I thought Trump would win back in the primary season.
Well good for you. You're like Nostradamus reincarnated.
How did you know that a reality show host who was a Democrat until recently would win the Republican primary? A guy who basically said he refused to spend money on the campaign, and refused to assemble a campaign team. And it was his third time running for President, when the last two times he had basically no support.
That's actually incredible if you're telling the truth.
Even Trump admitted he didn't think this was the case, but if you knew long before everyone else, then all the best. You should play lotto, given your amazing predictive abilities.
Are you lying on purpose or just repeating what someone's next door neighbor's third cousin from a second marriage told you?
In real life Silver is registered as nonaffiliated, although he has said that he votes for Democrats almost all the time for every office.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
