4 ms·

Why would people need to lie to the professional pollsters, though? If the election were held today and Trump won, it would be way outside of the margin of erro

by dangoor 10y ago

Why would people need to lie to the professional pollsters, though? If the election were held today and Trump won, it would be way outside of the margin of error on the polls.

VLM 10y ago
Garbage in, garbage out. No need for anyone to lie. Take for example the most recent Rasmussen showing Trump winning by 2%. To quote rasmussenreports.com: "Typically, calls are placed from 5 pm to 9 pm local time during the week." "After the surveys are completed, the raw data is processed through a weighting program to ensure that the sample reflects the overall population in terms of age, race, gender, political party, and other factors. The processing step is required because different segments of the population answer the phone in different ways. For example, women answer the phone more than men, older people are home more and answer more than younger people, and rural residents typically answer the phone more frequently than urban residents." Seriously, who answers spam calls at home between 5pm and 9pm? Anyone here? At all? rasmussen and all other poll operators keep their transfer function secret. Its entirely possible their transfer function bears no relationship with who it actually going to show up and vote in November. Lets pick on a semi-public transfer function from IDB. Their poll shows a dead tie Trump and Clinton both exactly 41%. However check the fine print about their transfer function "Party identification breakdown: (Unweighted) 261 Democrats/261 Republicans/275 Independents; (Weighted) 291/235/271." Seriously, they believe 23% of republicans are going to stay home on voting day? Seriously? I mean when I was a kid, even Pravda would have been embarrassed to publish something like that. Obviously the editorial board saw a Trump win in the results and ordered the Republican weighting decreased until the printable result was a tie at worst. Pew claimed in 2015 "When the partisan leanings of independents are taken into account, 48% either identify as Democrats or lean Democratic; 39% identify as Republicans or lean Republican. The gap in leaned party affiliation has held fairly steady since 2009, when Democrats held a 13-point advantage (50% to 37%)." So Pew implies the IDB transfer function should be wildly different, something like 48%/39%/13% than what they actually used to "surprisingly" provide a predetermined result. Note that for the actual vote in November, plus or minus the usual dead people always voting democratic, the transfer function is very close to 1:1. My vote is counted as one vote, not some weird fractional part of a vote depending on my race or whatever the polling companies are doing.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  You should go through the exercise of posting a mea culpa after the election (assuming the IBD poll is in line with the election results). Or just write the mea culpa on a piece of paper that you burn. What you are doing here is taking your facile analysis of what their skew correction might be and using it to speculate that a relatively conservative, information focused publication is trying to influence the vote by lying in a way that won't really do much to influence the vote.

by dangoor 10y ago

Why would people need to lie to the professional pollsters, though? If the election were held today and Trump won, it would be way outside of the margin of error on the polls.

VLM 10y ago

Garbage in, garbage out. No need for anyone to lie. Take for example the most recent Rasmussen showing Trump winning by 2%. To quote rasmussenreports.com: "Typically, calls are placed from 5 pm to 9 pm local time during the week." "After the surveys are completed, the raw data is processed through a weighting program to ensure that the sample reflects the overall population in terms of age, race, gender, political party, and other factors. The processing step is required because different segments of the population answer the phone in different ways. For example, women answer the phone more than men, older people are home more and answer more than younger people, and rural residents typically answer the phone more frequently than urban residents." Seriously, who answers spam calls at home between 5pm and 9pm? Anyone here? At all? rasmussen and all other poll operators keep their transfer function secret. Its entirely possible their transfer function bears no relationship with who it actually going to show up and vote in November. Lets pick on a semi-public transfer function from IDB. Their poll shows a dead tie Trump and Clinton both exactly 41%. However check the fine print about their transfer function "Party identification breakdown: (Unweighted) 261 Democrats/261 Republicans/275 Independents; (Weighted) 291/235/271." Seriously, they believe 23% of republicans are going to stay home on voting day? Seriously? I mean when I was a kid, even Pravda would have been embarrassed to publish something like that. Obviously the editorial board saw a Trump win in the results and ordered the Republican weighting decreased until the printable result was a tie at worst. Pew claimed in 2015 "When the partisan leanings of independents are taken into account, 48% either identify as Democrats or lean Democratic; 39% identify as Republicans or lean Republican. The gap in leaned party affiliation has held fairly steady since 2009, when Democrats held a 13-point advantage (50% to 37%)." So Pew implies the IDB transfer function should be wildly different, something like 48%/39%/13% than what they actually used to "surprisingly" provide a predetermined result. Note that for the actual vote in November, plus or minus the usual dead people always voting democratic, the transfer function is very close to 1:1. My vote is counted as one vote, not some weird fractional part of a vote depending on my race or whatever the polling companies are doing.

maxerickson 10y ago
You should go through the exercise of posting a mea culpa after the election (assuming the IBD poll is in line with the election results). Or just write the mea culpa on a piece of paper that you burn. What you are doing here is taking your facile analysis of what their skew correction might be and using it to speculate that a relatively conservative, information focused publication is trying to influence the vote by lying in a way that won't really do much to influence the vote.