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You're all going to hear a lot more about the Shy Tory Effect[1] in the coming months and years. It was first identified in Britain. It's talked about in Austra

You're all going to hear a lot more about the Shy Tory Effect[1] in the coming months and years. It was first identified in Britain. It's talked about in Australian politics too. In particularly heated elections, right-leaning voters begin to lie to pollsters about their voting intentions. They are embarrassed, or afraid, or skeptical about the pollster's intentions and honesty. So they lie. This creates a misleading impression of the actual position of the candidates. Typically, exit polls show a much more realistic picture of the vote. It's just that they're too late to operate on. The next generation of algorithms will need to introduce allowances for the shy tories in the US, relative to the degree to which one side feels unwilling to be honest with pollsters. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor

ghostly_s 10y ago
My understanding is exit polls are actually pretty unreliable; they are conducted primarily to correlate demographic data with the official totals for future campaigning purposes, but need to be adjusted based on the actual outcome as the raw data is not representative. Perhaps this particular phenomenon is less present, though?
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  My understanding is that they're a better predictor of the final tally than any other poll, because they occur after the vote has been cast.
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    There definitely have been problems with exit poll accuracy. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/upshot/exit-polls-why-they-so-often-mislead.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/upshot/exit-polls-why-they...
    - jacques_chester 10y ago
      I think I see the disconnect. I'm Australian, we have compulsory voting. I hadn't connected all the dots on the effects of voluntary voting on exit polls. Only got as far as thinking about the ballot.
Alex3917 10y ago
The other factor is that the polls were likely rigged in her favor since she was spending so much more on paid advertising. Note how they all magically converged on the last day of the race.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  > The other factor is that the polls were likely rigged in her favor since she was spending so much more on paid advertising. I very much doubt this hypothesis, as it requires a large, expensive and perfectly-secret conspiracy. And for the journalists working in the next room to not want to win a Pulitzer for exposing it.
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    > And for the journalists working in the next room to not want to win a Pulitzer for exposing it. Has there ever been a case of a journalist winning a pulitzer for uncovering corruption within their own newsroom? I thought there was a de facto ban on that. (E.g. I don't think the NYT won a pulitzer for reporting that they had previously censored all news about Bush's spying infrastructure to help him get re-elected.)
    - jacques_chester 10y ago
      > I thought there was a de facto ban on that. Also ordered by Clinton from a mail-order catalogue, I assume.
      - Alex3917 10y ago
        If the discrepancy is primarily due to the shy tory effect and not the polls being rigged, this should be easy to see from the data because robopolls should be vastly more accurate than live polls. Is this the pattern that actually exists? edit: "The study found only a slight impact by moving poll respondents from the internet to a phone call with a live interviewer — with larger effects among college-educated white voters."[1][2] So while I think it's likely there was a shy tory effect, the evidence suggests it was small enough that there must have been other factors at play. [1] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/polling-election-what-went-wrong-231207 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/polling-election-what-... [2] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/poll-shy-voters-trump-230667 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/poll-shy-voters-trump-...
zzzcpan 10y ago
> In particularly heated elections, right-leaning voters begin to lie to pollsters about their voting intentions. They are embarrassed, or afraid, or skeptical about the pollster's intentions and honesty. You are in the right direction, but I think it's a bit not like that and not about lying, being afraid and being skeptical about pollster's intention. If people feel shame for their choice, they would try to avoid expressing it anywhere, participating in polls, etc., especially in front of their peers. In regions where most have opposing views and shame for choosing the other candidate, they will feel pressure to keep their choice to themselves and they won't in the regions where most support the same candidate. Being afraid of something is a completely different thing and generally prevents voters to even vote, not just avoid polls.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  Britain has voluntary voting too. The phenomenon has been observed in several elections there and in Australia, where voting is compulsory. So discouragement of voter turnout is neither here nor there in the effect. In the end, it doesn't necessarily matter why it happens. What matters is that it happens.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    It does matter why, because scare tactics against voters were used quite often throughout history by dictators.
    - jacques_chester 10y ago
      I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Could put it more concretely?

ghostly_s 10y ago

My understanding is exit polls are actually pretty unreliable; they are conducted primarily to correlate demographic data with the official totals for future campaigning purposes, but need to be adjusted based on the actual outcome as the raw data is not representative. Perhaps this particular phenomenon is less present, though?

jacques_chester 10y ago
My understanding is that they're a better predictor of the final tally than any other poll, because they occur after the vote has been cast.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  There definitely have been problems with exit poll accuracy. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/upshot/exit-polls-why-they-so-often-mislead.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/upshot/exit-polls-why-they...
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    I think I see the disconnect. I'm Australian, we have compulsory voting. I hadn't connected all the dots on the effects of voluntary voting on exit polls. Only got as far as thinking about the ballot.

Alex3917 10y ago

The other factor is that the polls were likely rigged in her favor since she was spending so much more on paid advertising. Note how they all magically converged on the last day of the race.

jacques_chester 10y ago
> The other factor is that the polls were likely rigged in her favor since she was spending so much more on paid advertising. I very much doubt this hypothesis, as it requires a large, expensive and perfectly-secret conspiracy. And for the journalists working in the next room to not want to win a Pulitzer for exposing it.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > And for the journalists working in the next room to not want to win a Pulitzer for exposing it. Has there ever been a case of a journalist winning a pulitzer for uncovering corruption within their own newsroom? I thought there was a de facto ban on that. (E.g. I don't think the NYT won a pulitzer for reporting that they had previously censored all news about Bush's spying infrastructure to help him get re-elected.)
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    > I thought there was a de facto ban on that. Also ordered by Clinton from a mail-order catalogue, I assume.
    - Alex3917 10y ago
      If the discrepancy is primarily due to the shy tory effect and not the polls being rigged, this should be easy to see from the data because robopolls should be vastly more accurate than live polls. Is this the pattern that actually exists? edit: "The study found only a slight impact by moving poll respondents from the internet to a phone call with a live interviewer — with larger effects among college-educated white voters."[1][2] So while I think it's likely there was a shy tory effect, the evidence suggests it was small enough that there must have been other factors at play. [1] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/polling-election-what-went-wrong-231207 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/polling-election-what-... [2] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/poll-shy-voters-trump-230667 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/poll-shy-voters-trump-...

zzzcpan 10y ago

> In particularly heated elections, right-leaning voters begin to lie to pollsters about their voting intentions. They are embarrassed, or afraid, or skeptical about the pollster's intentions and honesty. You are in the right direction, but I think it's a bit not like that and not about lying, being afraid and being skeptical about pollster's intention. If people feel shame for their choice, they would try to avoid expressing it anywhere, participating in polls, etc., especially in front of their peers. In regions where most have opposing views and shame for choosing the other candidate, they will feel pressure to keep their choice to themselves and they won't in the regions where most support the same candidate. Being afraid of something is a completely different thing and generally prevents voters to even vote, not just avoid polls.

jacques_chester 10y ago
Britain has voluntary voting too. The phenomenon has been observed in several elections there and in Australia, where voting is compulsory. So discouragement of voter turnout is neither here nor there in the effect. In the end, it doesn't necessarily matter why it happens. What matters is that it happens.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  It does matter why, because scare tactics against voters were used quite often throughout history by dictators.
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Could put it more concretely?