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Conducting polls can be quite misleading. Remember the last US presidency election polls? They were totally inaccurate* Hedge funds could have lost a lot of mo

Conducting polls can be quite misleading. Remember the last US presidency election polls? They were totally inaccurate* Hedge funds could have lost a lot of money on this one. *: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/upshot/a-2016-review-why-key-state-polls-were-wrong-about-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/upshot/a-2016-review-why-...

swebs 8y ago
Except for the one poll that was accurate, but everyone was giving it shit because it was giving a result they didn't want to hear. http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/ http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/
- Armisael16 8y ago
  That poll had Trump winning the national popular vote by 3.2 points. He lost by 2.1 points. The poll missed by a total of 5.3 points. The average poll missed by 4.8 points. This result wasn't much worse than average, but it definitely was below average. I can see why someone might be confused by this - one might think these polls are predicting who will become president.
yohann305 8y ago
Why the downvote? Isn't this comment bringing good critic?
- Armisael16 8y ago
  No. The polls were fairly accurate; the problem was how people used the polls. This is also a topic that's been beaten to death over the last two years.
antientropic 8y ago
The polls were not that bad: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right.... It's just that the outcome of US presidential elections can be changed by relatively small shifts in a handful of swing states.
- ng12 8y ago
  > relatively small shifts in a handful of swing states. And if a poll doesn't reflect that reality then it's not a good poll.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    They were pretty indicative though. Trump only outperformed the national poll by 1-2 points and 2-3 points in the swing states. The whole 'polls are garbage' story that came out of 2016 isn't really supported by the data if you look at it. The error has been pretty consistent forever, it's just hard to do a poll and have it line up exactly with reality because a poll is a sample in time of the thoughts of a subset that may not match who shows up. All of those factors go into why polls miss; some populations are harder to reach than others, news can come out between the poll and election day or bad weather could mess up your turnout model by keeping a lot of people home. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right...
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The whole 'polls are garbage' story that came out of 2016 isn't really supported by the data if you look at it. There were a lot of garbage poll-based predictions (the Clinton 90+% ones) based on assuming independence of polling errors. Predictions with claims of quantified likelihood based on polls are a fairly recent media phenomenon, and I think some of the legitimate reaction to how bad many of those were spilled over into polls themselves, because people don't understand that the polls weren't the source of the problem. (Which fed into existing political narratives against polling; propaganda definitely played a role but there was a real issue it interacted with.)
      - rtkwe 8y ago
        Yeah the use of the polls was the real failure in 2016. A narrative and conventional wisdom bias set in to the analysis in a lot of places that discounted close results in important states.
detaro 8y ago
True, although exit polls such as here probably can be more reliable than asking days beforehand, especially to capture voter turnout.
soVeryTired 8y ago
Fair point - the Ashcroft polls, funded by the UK's Conservative party, called the 2015 election as a tie, although it turned out to be a major victory by the Conservatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Kingdom_general_el...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
talltimtom 8y ago
Maybe the polls were bad because the people conducting them were pushing to have sufficient difference between private and public polls in order to maximize their profits.

swebs 8y ago

Except for the one poll that was accurate, but everyone was giving it shit because it was giving a result they didn't want to hear. http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/ http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/

Armisael16 8y ago
That poll had Trump winning the national popular vote by 3.2 points. He lost by 2.1 points. The poll missed by a total of 5.3 points. The average poll missed by 4.8 points. This result wasn't much worse than average, but it definitely was below average. I can see why someone might be confused by this - one might think these polls are predicting who will become president.

yohann305 8y ago

Why the downvote? Isn't this comment bringing good critic?

Armisael16 8y ago
No. The polls were fairly accurate; the problem was how people used the polls. This is also a topic that's been beaten to death over the last two years.

antientropic 8y ago

The polls were not that bad: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right.... It's just that the outcome of US presidential elections can be changed by relatively small shifts in a handful of swing states.

ng12 8y ago
> relatively small shifts in a handful of swing states. And if a poll doesn't reflect that reality then it's not a good poll.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  They were pretty indicative though. Trump only outperformed the national poll by 1-2 points and 2-3 points in the swing states. The whole 'polls are garbage' story that came out of 2016 isn't really supported by the data if you look at it. The error has been pretty consistent forever, it's just hard to do a poll and have it line up exactly with reality because a poll is a sample in time of the thoughts of a subset that may not match who shows up. All of those factors go into why polls miss; some populations are harder to reach than others, news can come out between the poll and election day or bad weather could mess up your turnout model by keeping a lot of people home. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right...
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The whole 'polls are garbage' story that came out of 2016 isn't really supported by the data if you look at it. There were a lot of garbage poll-based predictions (the Clinton 90+% ones) based on assuming independence of polling errors. Predictions with claims of quantified likelihood based on polls are a fairly recent media phenomenon, and I think some of the legitimate reaction to how bad many of those were spilled over into polls themselves, because people don't understand that the polls weren't the source of the problem. (Which fed into existing political narratives against polling; propaganda definitely played a role but there was a real issue it interacted with.)
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      Yeah the use of the polls was the real failure in 2016. A narrative and conventional wisdom bias set in to the analysis in a lot of places that discounted close results in important states.

detaro 8y ago

True, although exit polls such as here probably can be more reliable than asking days beforehand, especially to capture voter turnout.

soVeryTired 8y ago

Fair point - the Ashcroft polls, funded by the UK's Conservative party, called the 2015 election as a tie, although it turned out to be a major victory by the Conservatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Kingdom_general_el...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

talltimtom 8y ago

Maybe the polls were bad because the people conducting them were pushing to have sufficient difference between private and public polls in order to maximize their profits.