6 ms·
Trump isn't nearly as far behind as you may think: http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/ http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-pol
by blhack 10y ago
Trump isn't nearly as far behind as you may think: http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/ http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/
Yes, this poll is an outlier because their methodology is very different than most other polls.
Yes, Nate Silver has a very different outlook on the election, but Nate Silver was also not very reliable during the primary season (although that is, by his admission, because primaries don't have very good polling).
If I had to make a[n extremely uneducated guess], it's because most polling is done over the phone, and I don't think "people who answer their phone when they don't recognize the number" is a very good random sampling of voters in the US.
I don't think this race is nearly as over as most people seem to believe, which is why, if you want to beat Trump, it is REALLY IMPORTANT (all caps!) that you get out and vote!
- argonaut 10y agoYou've just selected the national poll that is the most favorable to Trump. An average over polls >> any individual poll. Note that I am not saying that poll should be thrown out. But picking one poll in isolation is almost useless.
- blhack 10y agoLooking at this specific poll in isolation is fine as long as you understand that you are looking at it in isolation. I say so because of its polling methodology, which is unique. If you're a politics/polling nerd, this poll is interesting. If you're not, then yes, you are probably better off either just reading 538, or looking at the RCP polling average. https://news.usc.edu/109339/why-the-usc-dornsifel-a-times-presidential-poll-is-unlike-other-polls/ https://news.usc.edu/109339/why-the-usc-dornsifel-a-times-pr...
- threeseed 10y agoMost politics/polling nerds look at aggregations of polls. Not sure where you get this idea that they are interested in a poll like USC which is such an outlier.
- blhack 10y agoThe fact that it's an outlier doesn't interest you? Maybe we have different definitions of "nerd".
- thesimpsons1022 10y agojust stop man. you're sounding desperate. no one is buying it
- snovv_crash 10y agoThe fact that it's an outlier means, statistically, that it is more likely to be wrong.
- sagarm 10y agoYes, it's more likely to be wrong. But this poll performed well in 2012[1] with the same methodology. As a polling nerd, wouldn't you be interested in why it is producing unusual results this year and what implications that might have for polling in general? [1] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-poll-faq-20161006-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-poll-faq-20161006-...
- heartbreak 10y agoRegarding that poll specifically: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old-illinois-man-is-distorting-national-polling-averages.html?_r=0&referer=https://www.google.com/ http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-...
- blhack 10y agoTheir response: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-daybreak-poll-questions-20161013-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-daybreak-poll-ques... Where they eliminated that one 19 year old, and saw very little effect on the poll.
- morgante 10y ago> Where they eliminated that one 19 year old, and saw very little effect on the poll. How is that a compelling answer? It's like if a news investigation found that a company had poor quality control and features a photo of a defective product in their writeup and the company's response was "we issued a refund for the product the news team purchased." All I can say is that you sound an awful lot like the 2012 talking heads who were convinced Romney would win despite all the polling pointing to the contrary. For the record, Nate Silver's biggest mistake in the primaries was not listening to the polls enough. For him (and every other data-driven forecaster) to be getting the general wrong they'd have to be making the exact opposite mistake as before. I'd be happy to give you 10:1 odds on Trump losing. And I'm biased here: a few months ago, I was convinced Trump would win.
- HillRat 10y agoI haven't seen the crosstabs on the USC polls, but my gut feeling is that you're right; the kind of very fine demographic reweighting they're doing isn't common, because (A) it's a pain in the ass and of dubious real-world value; and (B) it's vulnerable to magnifying sample-size and selection problems, of which the skewed Trump support amongst young African-Americans is one example. So while I'll be interested to do a retrospective on the poll's accuracy and precision after the election, I'm personally not putting much faith in it for now.
- vinhboy 10y agoI heard about this poll, but I haven't paid attention to it. You got me reading up on it. Now I can't sleep...
- threeseed 10y agoIt is the height of stupidity to believe in any one poll. Especially that one which has had major issues with sampling: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old-illinois-man-is-distorting-national-polling-averages.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old... There are plenty of aggregation sites which are far better at smoothing out any issues: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html?ref=politics http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-... They all show Trump losing in a landslide with Clinton getting around 330 EC votes.
- blhack 10y agoUSC's response to this: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-daybreak-poll-questions-20161013-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-daybreak-poll-ques...
- threeseed 10y agoThis is exactly why you should never blindly trust a single poll. We don't know who is right/wrong until after the election so it is better to assume that a range of different polls taken at different times with different methodologies is likely to be more accurate.
- rconti 10y agoYou've cherry-picked the one outlier. It's, of course, very possible that "this time it's different" as they say every time. He is certainly an unconventional candidate. However, I'll throw my lot in every time with the MANY polls who are trying to account for this, and the MANY poll aggregators who are trying to make sense out of this madness. I think 538 was actually quite reliable during the primary season. Pretty much bang on, in fact. Everything they said anti-trump was basically opinion and they have been roundly chastised (as deserved) for treating punditry as fact.
- duncanawoods 10y agoThere was a good documentary on polling on BBC Radio 4 in light of their very weak performance in IndyRef and the UK General Election. One pollster said that he actually has a high regard for outliers which statistical aggregations do not capture. In cases where the majority of pollsters got it horribly wrong, there have been outliers at some significant distance from the herd that have been on the money but ridiculed at the time. The reasoning is that pollsters have herd behaviours - they believe publishing an outlier they will lose them credibility so they suppress inconvenient results and will rework methodologies and weightings to avoid it. For many, election polling is a loss leader - its publicity to get their name out there for commercial services. The credibility of the outlier is increased because it has escaped the herd pressure despite the incentives.
- ordu 10y agoI think problem is deeper. If one predicts heads as result of coin toss and other predicts tails, than one of them will be right. It says nothing about their abilities to predict. We always can find some outlier who predicts results different from majority of pollsters. The keyword is 'always': if such a possibility always exists (probability of existence P=1), then we can't extract any information from it (-log_2 P == 0). To extract information we need to carefully revise methodology behind outlier predictions, and such an activity is a complex task for skilled data analyst.
- 2AF3 10y agoIf you look at the pictures of the number of people in attendance at their respective events one would conclude Trump is ahead.
- jaredklewis 10y agoDo we have any evidence that number of people at campaigning events correlates to more votes? If not, why would we conclude that? Is it not (in absence of any evidence) equally plausible that the type of voter that will vote for Trump is more predisposed to attend a campaign event than other voters?
- mixologic 10y agoWhich is why thats an awful gauge of the electorate. The vast majority of voters do not attend political events, and "attendees at events" is really just an uncorrelated measure of "enthusiasm for a candidate amongst their base". If 40% of the country loved him so much that they all showed up at every single rally, yet the other 60% hate him, and will vote for HRC despite not really loving her, then you see a rally filled to the brim with Trump supporters, and nobody at hers, yet his chances are zip. Rally attendance is a meaningless metric.
- 2AF3 10y agoIt might not be great, but I trust it more than these dishonest polls
- ivv 10y agoBernie is a good counter-example. Huge rallies, way behind in votes.
- gallonofmilk 10y agohave you not read wikileaks? the DNC/Hillary rigged it against him from day one, he never stood a chance
- s_kilk 10y ago> I don't think this race is nearly as over as most people seem to believe This feels a lot like the atmosphere over here (in Britain) just before the Brexit vote. Many people thought it was a guaranteed Remain vote, and woke up to a terrible fright on that Friday morning.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 10y ago4% in national polls (that's the number averaging across the polls) is a huge difference given the strong alignment of so much of the electorate. And it isn't even the interesting way to analyze the election, winning the national popular vote isn't what wins the race. If you look at states that are contested, things look bad for Trump, even in the ones where demographics favor him he is not getting polling results that point to a win (an example would be Pennsylvania).
- empath75 10y agoNate silver personally hasn't had a good record of making predictions in the primary this year, but his model had trump winning through most of the primary season. He just didn't believe his own model.