3 ms·

The "statistics" is only in decline because it was blatantly used to try and sway the election. As in, oversampling demographics to get the necessary conclusion

The "statistics" is only in decline because it was blatantly used to try and sway the election. As in, oversampling demographics to get the necessary conclusion, phrasing the questions such that you're "literally Hitler" if you answer them "wrong" and so on. I quoted "statistics" because it's not statistics, it's pretty obvious propaganda, using the most shameless tricks in the book. Editors of Soviet Pravda would be proud. We know much of this thanks to Wikileaks now, as well as because it was so blindingly obvious that only a complete moron would think the polls were impartial. I'm not afraid of "what's next" because as far as political polling is concerned (calling it "statistics" is way too generous), it just can't really get any worse than it already is.

explainthisth 10y ago
Your comment is vague, but if you are talking about US election polls, they were 1-2% off in aggregate. That's a pretty good performance.
gipp 10y ago
The polls were no better or worse than past years. Reporting on the polls is a different story.
- general_ai 10y ago
  Even the polls were cooked. E.g. to improve the odds of polls fitting the narrative, democratic leaning pollsters would disproportionately sample minorities known to vote predominantly democratic. The patron saint of pollsters, Nate Silver, was consistently wrong about everything all the way through the campaign. Now, if his main goal wasn't to peddle a particular narrative, one would expect him to make corrections to his models after getting things wrong, but no, he sacrificed his professional integrity instead. I'm sure this is not the first time this happened, but this year it was particularly obvious, and I don't really trust the polls at all anymore except when it comes to completely non-political topics.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    I was about to point out that your use of "oversampling" didn't refer to the standard statistical technique, but rather to the right-wing conspiracy theory about polling being intentionally altered, but you've pretty much made that clear with your reply. I think this first became a "thing" back in 2012, when the polls were predicting Obama to beat Romney, and that just didn't seem like it could be true, and it was blamed on "oversampling". Also, Nate Silver isn't a pollster, he just uses their output as input to his models.
    - general_ai 10y ago
      https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26551 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26551
      - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
        wow. Unbelievable. This kind of collusion between pollsters and campaigns should be illegal.
        general_ai 10y ago
        We'll need to conduct a poll to see what people think about this... oh wait.
        zigzigzag 10y ago
        Campaigns often conduct private polling that they pay for, why should this be illegal? I don't see anything wrong in that email - all it means is that they wanted to get more resolution for certain demographics, I think.
        general_ai 10y ago
        No, they didn't want "more resolution" for "certain demographics". They wanted these demographics overrepresented in the final sample, without disclosing the fact they are overrepresented. These are polls for external consumption, the kinds you'd then find on CNN, HuffPo and MSNBC. I'm sure they also had their own private polls which, while probably also cooked, were more accurate.
deleted 10y ago
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explainthisth 10y ago

Your comment is vague, but if you are talking about US election polls, they were 1-2% off in aggregate. That's a pretty good performance.

gipp 10y ago

The polls were no better or worse than past years. Reporting on the polls is a different story.

general_ai 10y ago
Even the polls were cooked. E.g. to improve the odds of polls fitting the narrative, democratic leaning pollsters would disproportionately sample minorities known to vote predominantly democratic. The patron saint of pollsters, Nate Silver, was consistently wrong about everything all the way through the campaign. Now, if his main goal wasn't to peddle a particular narrative, one would expect him to make corrections to his models after getting things wrong, but no, he sacrificed his professional integrity instead. I'm sure this is not the first time this happened, but this year it was particularly obvious, and I don't really trust the polls at all anymore except when it comes to completely non-political topics.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  I was about to point out that your use of "oversampling" didn't refer to the standard statistical technique, but rather to the right-wing conspiracy theory about polling being intentionally altered, but you've pretty much made that clear with your reply. I think this first became a "thing" back in 2012, when the polls were predicting Obama to beat Romney, and that just didn't seem like it could be true, and it was blamed on "oversampling". Also, Nate Silver isn't a pollster, he just uses their output as input to his models.
  - general_ai 10y ago
    https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26551 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26551
    - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
      wow. Unbelievable. This kind of collusion between pollsters and campaigns should be illegal.
      - general_ai 10y ago
        We'll need to conduct a poll to see what people think about this... oh wait.
      - zigzigzag 10y ago
        Campaigns often conduct private polling that they pay for, why should this be illegal? I don't see anything wrong in that email - all it means is that they wanted to get more resolution for certain demographics, I think.
        general_ai 10y ago
        No, they didn't want "more resolution" for "certain demographics". They wanted these demographics overrepresented in the final sample, without disclosing the fact they are overrepresented. These are polls for external consumption, the kinds you'd then find on CNN, HuffPo and MSNBC. I'm sure they also had their own private polls which, while probably also cooked, were more accurate.

deleted 10y ago

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