1 of 1- Common Sense
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Pollsters suffer huge embarrassment
Pollsters suffer huge embarrassment
Pollsters and election modelers suffered an industry-shattering embarrassment at the hands of Donald Trump on Tuesday night.Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, had long said the polls were biased against him. His claims — dismissed and mocked by the experts — turned out to be true.
“It’s going to put the polling industry out of business,” said CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “It’s going to put the voter projection industry out of business.”
Going into Election Day, a strong majority of pollsters and election modelers forecast that Democrat Hillary Clinton would coast to victory, with many predicting she would sweep the battlegrounds and win north of 300 electoral votes.
The final University of Virginia Center for Politics model had Clinton winning 322 electoral votes to 216 for Trump, with Clinton winning Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all states that she lost.
Liberals lashed out at data guru Nate Silver for giving Trump a 35 percent chance of victory heading into Election Day, claiming he was putting his thumb on the scale for Trump by making the race appear closer than it was.
Of the 11 national polls to be released in the final week of the race, only two — a Los Angeles Times/USC survey and one from IBD/TIPP — showed Trump with the lead.
The L.A. Times survey was criticized as “experimental” by industry experts for polling the same pool of people and for the way it weighted black voters.
But for the second consecutive presidential cycle, the L.A. Times and IBD/TIPP surveys were among the most accurate, making them the gold standard going forward.
The rest of the polls showed Clinton with leads of between 2 and 6 points, boosting the Democrat to a 3.3-point national lead in the RealClearPolitics average.
And the battleground data was just as biased against Trump.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” former vice president Biden said during a campaign event in Texas on Monday. "All men and women created by — you know, you know, the thing.”
- tennyson
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Re: Pollsters suffer huge embarrassment
Indeed they did. The pollsters (and politicians that use them to formulate campaign plans) will have a lot of soul searching to do to see if current polling techniques no longer work or if this campaign was an anomaly.
"Do not confuse motion and progress, A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress"
- Goose
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Re: Pollsters suffer huge embarrassment
Common Sense wrote:
And the battleground data was just as biased against Trump.
Funny, Fox got it just as wrong as everyone else.
So much for the bias claim.
Rather than alleging "bias" to explain, well everything, we might try to actually understand why polling seems less accurate than it has in the past.
Many questions come to mind. How are pollsters contacting people? Are they overly reliant on land lines in an increasingly cellular world? How many calls must they make to actually get a sample size of, say 1000 for example, responses? A Large number might suggest that many people are unwilling to talk to pollsters. That could skew results. Other questions remain and they will dog the polling industry. Heck, it might make polls irrelevent. However, I doubt this, as the media, and the People seem to have an insatiable thirst for predictions.
Alleging bias in polling? How would that work? Is the methodology of the poll purposely set up to undercount Trump voters? Really? Was the methodology (The way the polls were conducted) changed from the way polls were conducted in the Primary? Those showed big Trump leads. Are you telling me that since the primary somebody went back to the rules of how polls are conducted and changed them? I have to see some proof to swallow that theory.
Polling is obviously in trouble. But, I just don't see a conspiracy theory under every bed.
But then, I'm not a Trumper.
Last edited by Goose (11/10/2016 5:34 am)
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.