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> The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness That's true for "reasonable" poll sizes. As your poll size increases past a certain point, it does be

> The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness That's true for "reasonable" poll sizes. As your poll size increases past a certain point, it does begin to guarantee correctness. An election is a poll with the size of all eligible voters.

dstick 6y ago
Yeah I think Telegram, like Whatsapp, is adopted broadly enough not to bias too heavily in one direction. Definitely not 90%, and especially not if that “bias” matches the word on the street.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Telegram? 5% of the world uses Telegram. And I bet the 50+ age demographic is heavily underrepresented in that subset. Significant sample bias shows up in US polling using mediums that are exponentially more widespread. Nonetheless, I don't doubt the validity of these particular results, because I think we have enough corroborating evidence. We don't have to justify the rigorousness of a Telegram poll to come to that same conclusion.
  - tripzilch 6y ago
    People in different parts of the world differ HUGELY in what instant-messaging communications platform they use. For instance people in the US still use text-messaging to a significant percentage. That's hard for me to believe as well. It's no use looking at Telegram's world usage, that's for sure.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Maybe Telegram is popular in Belarus, but there is one thing that is true all over the world: rates of technology literacy and access is lower for the old/poor/rural.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Biases are irrelevant. If you look a the numbers, there are more people saying they voted for the opposition on the Telegram pool than votes on the official pool. About 5 times as many.
  - iagovar 6y ago
    Exactly, this is impossible to reconcile. Either there has been vote fraud or this people didn't actually go to the poll station. Or people can vote more than once.
  - lqdc13 6y ago
    What about the people under 18 who I assume could take the poll and also people who didn't go to vote but took a few seconds to take the poll on Telegram? Also what about all the babushkas who most likely voted for Lukashenko but don't have a smartphone? This is not to say that more people didn't vote for the opposition than the official numbers state. But Lukashenko still could have won.
    - tw04 6y ago
      We'll say Belarus has 1m people that are old enough to both have a smart phone and be under the legal voting age (and that's being extremely gracious). Unless you're saying literally EVERY ONE OF THEM voted in this poll AND voted for the opposition, there are STILL more people of voting age in the telegram poll who voted for the opposition than "officially" voted for the opposition. The numbers are nearly impossible to believe unless Telegram is intentionally fudging the numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Belarus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Belarus
  - kube-system 6y ago
    This is certainly damning data, but having a telephone in Belarus does not necessarily mean that person voted in the prior election. This is good evidence, but not a mathematical proof.
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
sam_lowry_ 6y ago
Indeed. "Official" election results were giving Tsikhanoyskaya around half a million votes while over 1 million Telegram users with Belarusian phone numbers already said that they voted for her. Se here https://t.me/telegrambelarus/9 https://t.me/telegrambelarus/9
jariel 6y ago
"An election is a poll with the size of all eligible voters." Not really though. An election is ostensibly 'perfect sample of the electorate' (assuming everyone voted), which is what makes it 'good'. It's very easy to get a 'very large sample size' that is still 'very inaccurate'. In this case, we're talking about potential numbers larger than literal voters, which makes it interesting - but the sample size again is not the issues if we're looking at a 'poll'.
kube-system 6y ago
> As your poll size increases past a certain point, it does begin to guarantee correctness. > An election is a poll with the size of all eligible voters. I think you're oversimplifying the situation. Clearly, sample size alone doesn't have that much of a correctness guarantee, or according to your own statement, we'd be able to trust the official results.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > Clearly, sample size alone doesn't have that much of a correctness guarantee, or according to your own statement, we'd be able to trust the official results. People are not complaining because the election is a biased sample of the population (not possible because by definition an election is open to all eligible voters). People are complaining because they believe the government is not truthfully reporting the actual election results. Good polling technique cannot mitigate fraud.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    Yes, this is the point I am making. Sample size is but one of many factors that influence the reliability of a poll, and it is not the only consideration for good polling technique. A large sample does not mitigate those factors. If there is an issue with the underlying polling technique, making the sample larger does not guarantee more correctness. You simply end up with a larger set of bad data.
    - snovv_crash 6y ago
      So what it it wasn't random, but captured 90% of the population?
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Where are you seeing 90%? The poll itself says 59% of the 2.3m respondents were people who voted in the election. That's 1.4m people, which is 15% of their population and 21% of their eligible voting population.
Alupis 6y ago
What we have here is a Sample, and in statistics (of which Polling is a discipline) you require a Randomized Sample of the Population before you can draw any meaningful conclusions. Telegram users are not going to pass any "Randomness" scrutiny. For all we know, Telegram User A asks Telegram User B to take the poll, etc. That's not random, and can introduce all sorts of statistical bias.
- gbrown 6y ago
  You’re ignoring the finite population and the actual numbers involved.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    It is simultaneously possible for the results to have statistical issues while also being good enough to provide utility as evidence for drawing some conclusions. You can both be right.
    - gbrown 6y ago
      Indeed
- thereare5lights 6y ago
  What does that have to do with the fact that the number of telegram users that voted for the opposition candidate exceeds the official number of voters that voted for the opposition candidate?
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    Phone number is not an unique identifier. There are plenty of people who use multiple phone numbers. While I don't believe in Belarus official results, that Telegram evidence is not a real evidence. It's just a hint.
    - asutekku 6y ago
ashtonkem 6y ago
Especially if your poll is showing extremely lopsided results. If a poll shows 80% for candidate A, you’d only need to hit 62.5% of the population to guarantee that candidate A would hit 50% of the vote even if the remaining 47.5% voted for other candidates.

dstick 6y ago

Yeah I think Telegram, like Whatsapp, is adopted broadly enough not to bias too heavily in one direction. Definitely not 90%, and especially not if that “bias” matches the word on the street.

kube-system 6y ago
Telegram? 5% of the world uses Telegram. And I bet the 50+ age demographic is heavily underrepresented in that subset. Significant sample bias shows up in US polling using mediums that are exponentially more widespread. Nonetheless, I don't doubt the validity of these particular results, because I think we have enough corroborating evidence. We don't have to justify the rigorousness of a Telegram poll to come to that same conclusion.
- tripzilch 6y ago
  People in different parts of the world differ HUGELY in what instant-messaging communications platform they use. For instance people in the US still use text-messaging to a significant percentage. That's hard for me to believe as well. It's no use looking at Telegram's world usage, that's for sure.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    Maybe Telegram is popular in Belarus, but there is one thing that is true all over the world: rates of technology literacy and access is lower for the old/poor/rural.
marcosdumay 6y ago
Biases are irrelevant. If you look a the numbers, there are more people saying they voted for the opposition on the Telegram pool than votes on the official pool. About 5 times as many.
- iagovar 6y ago
  Exactly, this is impossible to reconcile. Either there has been vote fraud or this people didn't actually go to the poll station. Or people can vote more than once.
- lqdc13 6y ago
  What about the people under 18 who I assume could take the poll and also people who didn't go to vote but took a few seconds to take the poll on Telegram? Also what about all the babushkas who most likely voted for Lukashenko but don't have a smartphone? This is not to say that more people didn't vote for the opposition than the official numbers state. But Lukashenko still could have won.
  - tw04 6y ago
    We'll say Belarus has 1m people that are old enough to both have a smart phone and be under the legal voting age (and that's being extremely gracious). Unless you're saying literally EVERY ONE OF THEM voted in this poll AND voted for the opposition, there are STILL more people of voting age in the telegram poll who voted for the opposition than "officially" voted for the opposition. The numbers are nearly impossible to believe unless Telegram is intentionally fudging the numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Belarus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Belarus
- kube-system 6y ago
  This is certainly damning data, but having a telephone in Belarus does not necessarily mean that person voted in the prior election. This is good evidence, but not a mathematical proof.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago

sam_lowry_ 6y ago

Indeed. "Official" election results were giving Tsikhanoyskaya around half a million votes while over 1 million Telegram users with Belarusian phone numbers already said that they voted for her. Se here https://t.me/telegrambelarus/9 https://t.me/telegrambelarus/9

jariel 6y ago

"An election is a poll with the size of all eligible voters." Not really though. An election is ostensibly 'perfect sample of the electorate' (assuming everyone voted), which is what makes it 'good'. It's very easy to get a 'very large sample size' that is still 'very inaccurate'. In this case, we're talking about potential numbers larger than literal voters, which makes it interesting - but the sample size again is not the issues if we're looking at a 'poll'.

kube-system 6y ago

> As your poll size increases past a certain point, it does begin to guarantee correctness. > An election is a poll with the size of all eligible voters. I think you're oversimplifying the situation. Clearly, sample size alone doesn't have that much of a correctness guarantee, or according to your own statement, we'd be able to trust the official results.

nordsieck 6y ago
> Clearly, sample size alone doesn't have that much of a correctness guarantee, or according to your own statement, we'd be able to trust the official results. People are not complaining because the election is a biased sample of the population (not possible because by definition an election is open to all eligible voters). People are complaining because they believe the government is not truthfully reporting the actual election results. Good polling technique cannot mitigate fraud.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Yes, this is the point I am making. Sample size is but one of many factors that influence the reliability of a poll, and it is not the only consideration for good polling technique. A large sample does not mitigate those factors. If there is an issue with the underlying polling technique, making the sample larger does not guarantee more correctness. You simply end up with a larger set of bad data.
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    So what it it wasn't random, but captured 90% of the population?
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Where are you seeing 90%? The poll itself says 59% of the 2.3m respondents were people who voted in the election. That's 1.4m people, which is 15% of their population and 21% of their eligible voting population.

Alupis 6y ago

What we have here is a Sample, and in statistics (of which Polling is a discipline) you require a Randomized Sample of the Population before you can draw any meaningful conclusions. Telegram users are not going to pass any "Randomness" scrutiny. For all we know, Telegram User A asks Telegram User B to take the poll, etc. That's not random, and can introduce all sorts of statistical bias.

gbrown 6y ago
You’re ignoring the finite population and the actual numbers involved.
- kube-system 6y ago
  It is simultaneously possible for the results to have statistical issues while also being good enough to provide utility as evidence for drawing some conclusions. You can both be right.
  - gbrown 6y ago
    Indeed
thereare5lights 6y ago
What does that have to do with the fact that the number of telegram users that voted for the opposition candidate exceeds the official number of voters that voted for the opposition candidate?
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  Phone number is not an unique identifier. There are plenty of people who use multiple phone numbers. While I don't believe in Belarus official results, that Telegram evidence is not a real evidence. It's just a hint.
  - asutekku 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

Especially if your poll is showing extremely lopsided results. If a poll shows 80% for candidate A, you’d only need to hit 62.5% of the population to guarantee that candidate A would hit 50% of the vote even if the remaining 47.5% voted for other candidates.