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It's probably wishful thinking on my part but I'd like to open an honest discussion about the nature of polls, whether or not they have provided utility in prior elections and why they've seemed to be off for almost a decade.
I understand that we're ultimately looking at a situation in which one of only two predictions are going to be correct. But the Iowa Selzer poll, amidst almost every other that came out in the weeks and months leading up to the election, demonstrate that something is seriously wrong with either the way in which the data is being gathered, or the reception to the prompts for that data.
I myself will not get rustled if you just come in to tell me how stupid I am. Maybe I am stupid. That's the reason I try to learn from different people, and it's the reason I'm making this thread. I'd ask that you be respectful to each other however. If possible, let's not let this devolve into a shit-slinging contest.
The fact is that presidential polls have, up until last month, never underrepresented a party three times in a row. Something is seriously off. I realize that there's probably no one single element, but a number of contributing factors. I'd like to examine them.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's pretty silly to simplify it down to "they're liberals so they favor liberals". I don't think that every single major news network aside from Fox would just lie about data. Harris' own campaign does admit in this interview that their internal polling never had a great outlook, but that was not common knowledge until after the election:
So what's going on? Everyone who has ever said "I don't care about polls" has, at one point or another, utilized polls whenever it suits them. But unless people figure out what went wrong and how it went so wrong, they'll become less and less useful.
Conversely the betting odds had it precisely correct for the most part. Harris had a short lived surge but electionbettingodds.com had it 312 for Trump almost the entire time. Some of the prominent people who are by now in hiding for a bit insisted this was due to a "mystery bettor" who placed two large bids for Trump, essentially thumbing the scales. But I think it was about a million maybe, which represented less than 1% of the pool.
Anyway I'm curious to get feedback on what could have caused the polls to get it wrong three times in a row. Some have said that Trump supporters are less likely to engage with analysts, or less likely to admit they voted for Trump. I can see this, but I have a hard time believing this is the sole element.
I understand that we're ultimately looking at a situation in which one of only two predictions are going to be correct. But the Iowa Selzer poll, amidst almost every other that came out in the weeks and months leading up to the election, demonstrate that something is seriously wrong with either the way in which the data is being gathered, or the reception to the prompts for that data.
I myself will not get rustled if you just come in to tell me how stupid I am. Maybe I am stupid. That's the reason I try to learn from different people, and it's the reason I'm making this thread. I'd ask that you be respectful to each other however. If possible, let's not let this devolve into a shit-slinging contest.
The fact is that presidential polls have, up until last month, never underrepresented a party three times in a row. Something is seriously off. I realize that there's probably no one single element, but a number of contributing factors. I'd like to examine them.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's pretty silly to simplify it down to "they're liberals so they favor liberals". I don't think that every single major news network aside from Fox would just lie about data. Harris' own campaign does admit in this interview that their internal polling never had a great outlook, but that was not common knowledge until after the election:
So what's going on? Everyone who has ever said "I don't care about polls" has, at one point or another, utilized polls whenever it suits them. But unless people figure out what went wrong and how it went so wrong, they'll become less and less useful.
Conversely the betting odds had it precisely correct for the most part. Harris had a short lived surge but electionbettingodds.com had it 312 for Trump almost the entire time. Some of the prominent people who are by now in hiding for a bit insisted this was due to a "mystery bettor" who placed two large bids for Trump, essentially thumbing the scales. But I think it was about a million maybe, which represented less than 1% of the pool.
Anyway I'm curious to get feedback on what could have caused the polls to get it wrong three times in a row. Some have said that Trump supporters are less likely to engage with analysts, or less likely to admit they voted for Trump. I can see this, but I have a hard time believing this is the sole element.
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