4 ms·

If people lie, you can't poll accurately. And when people view an election as a game to "win", why not lie to throw off the other side? It's a basic art of wa

If people lie, you can't poll accurately. And when people view an election as a game to "win", why not lie to throw off the other side? It's a basic art of war tactic.

droptablemain 6y ago
So you're implying there's a mass conspiracy among Trump supporters to lie to pollsters?
- vermilingua 6y ago
  Why does it need to be a conspiracy? There is massive (at least percieved) social pressure against Trump supporters, how could this possibly not make it difficult to poll accurately?
- compiler-guy 6y ago
  It doesn’t need to be a conspiracy, just a general tendency that corresponds with political affiliation.
- possibleworlds 6y ago
  They sure talk about it a lot on places like reddit. Justification being a belief that it is not truly anonymous, and the info will be used against them down the track in various ways.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    This is the first I've heard of it, and I'm on conservative subs all day every day.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  There are two possible explanations for why US polling stopped tracking US election results in 2004 and now underestimates conservative vote margins. Either conservatives have started lying to pollsters about their voting intentions or conservative officials started manipulating the vote totals in their favor. Take your pick as to which possible explanation is most palatable and/or most probable.
  - ars 6y ago
    There are way more explanations than that. For example pollsters might simply not be talking to conservatives. If you don't have a representative sample of the population your poll will be inaccurate.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      The importance of representative sampling is taught in undergraduate statistics courses. Do you have any reason to believe that pollsters and other statisticians are so ignorant of their own field not to understand this?
      - ars 6y ago
        Yes, I suspect most pollsters are Democrats, and are not aware of how they come across to Republicans. So they think they have a representative sample, but they really don't. It can be explained simply by pollsters mainly living in large cities, and not really understanding rural Americans.
        kenjackson 6y ago
        Why did this just start happening relatively recently?
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Because polling response rates fell off a cliff over the past decade or two, leaving a sample population much different than was historically available. (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-th...)
        kenjackson 6y ago
        Is that because of cell phones or some other reason?
- vimax 6y ago
  I think he's implying that individual humans have their own motives different from those conducting the polls, and you shouldn't expect completely reliable data without incentivizing those you are polling to be truthful.
- exmicrosoldier 6y ago
  It does not seem implausible that supporters of a group that participates in rampant types of voter supression, gerrymandering, throwing away ballots, & sueing to prevent votes being counted would be afraid of lying to nosy strangers.
- jejones3141 6y ago
  Could be a conspiracy, could be concern that being targeted if they are somehow identified as Trump supporters.
- droptablemain 6y ago
  I find it far more likely that polling methods are flawed than Trump supporters are intelligent and organized enough to engage in a mass deception campaign.
CameronNemo 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
heavyset_go 6y ago
It's likely that there is a demographic that doesn't trust or like the media apparatus, and choose not to participate in polling at all, as well.
saeranv 6y ago
Thus far it actually seems to be due different response rates between Republican versus Democratic voters. Democrats seem more likely to respond to pollsters. Of course pollsters already know this, so they weight the samples to reflect underlying demographics, but it gets tricky to do this accurately if your surveying response rate is 1% to 2%. And of course... the forecast modelers know this. Which is what Gelman discusses in his post. Given that they now have 2016, and 2020 as examples of presidential polling errors, modelers need to shift their priors in a number of ways to account for what looks like a persistent undersampling of GOP voters.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Of course pollsters already know this, so they weight the samples to reflect underlying demographics That doesn't actually help unless the difference in response rate is explained by the underlying demographics. If it is correlated with preferences on the issues polled even controlling for non-preference demographics, it's not going to be correctable by that means, nor is it going to be measurable so that it can be corrected. OTOH, if it is a long-term consistent effect tied to partisan presidential voting preferences across election (and not, e.g., tied to the particular transitory trends, or evolving significantly over time) you could, as a poll-based forecaster, correct for the effect without measuring the correlation in preference and response rates by adjusting how you draw forecasts from polling data by correctingnbased on empirical election results and their relation to polls.
- JeremyNT 6y ago
  > And of course... the forecast modelers know this. Which is what Gelman discusses in his post. Given that they now have 2016, and 2020 as examples of presidential polling errors, modelers need to shift their priors in a number of ways to account for what looks like a persistent undersampling of GOP voters. In the article, he mentions the simplest and probably most correct way to do this: reduce the confidence these models have in the accuracy of the polling. The top line number he threw out as feeling "good" about was 75% for a Biden win. As it is, it's becoming difficult to find any value in these models because the events they represent as outliers seem to be consistently occurring. On the other hand, if they adjust to more accurately reflect the uncertainty in the the polls, eventually everything starts looking close to a coin toss - in which case they have no practical value, either.
dragonwriter 6y ago
Lying or other deliberate strategy probably isn't the issue. Propensity to participate in polls having even a slight correlation to preferences on the issues being polled will create a systematic polling error, however, and it's an effect that is difficult to measure because how do you measure the preferences of nonrespondents?
s9w 6y ago
It's no wonder people lie about their vote when the wrong answer can get them into trouble.
gpm 6y ago
Sort of, but if people lie predictably you can still poll accurately (or at least build accurate models from your polls). Without coordination a bunch of independent actors are generally predictable, because any random choice they makes averages out to the mean choice. With coordination the pollsters should be capable of finding out about it too. So I think lying to polls only works while it's still rare enough (in terms of # of elections that it happens in) that the pollsters aren't accounting for it.

If people lie, you can't poll accurately. And when people view an election as a game to "win", why not lie to throw off the other side? It's a basic art of war tactic.

droptablemain 6y ago

So you're implying there's a mass conspiracy among Trump supporters to lie to pollsters?

vermilingua 6y ago
Why does it need to be a conspiracy? There is massive (at least percieved) social pressure against Trump supporters, how could this possibly not make it difficult to poll accurately?
compiler-guy 6y ago
It doesn’t need to be a conspiracy, just a general tendency that corresponds with political affiliation.
possibleworlds 6y ago
They sure talk about it a lot on places like reddit. Justification being a belief that it is not truly anonymous, and the info will be used against them down the track in various ways.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  This is the first I've heard of it, and I'm on conservative subs all day every day.
bleepblorp 6y ago
There are two possible explanations for why US polling stopped tracking US election results in 2004 and now underestimates conservative vote margins. Either conservatives have started lying to pollsters about their voting intentions or conservative officials started manipulating the vote totals in their favor. Take your pick as to which possible explanation is most palatable and/or most probable.
- ars 6y ago
  There are way more explanations than that. For example pollsters might simply not be talking to conservatives. If you don't have a representative sample of the population your poll will be inaccurate.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    The importance of representative sampling is taught in undergraduate statistics courses. Do you have any reason to believe that pollsters and other statisticians are so ignorant of their own field not to understand this?
    - ars 6y ago
      Yes, I suspect most pollsters are Democrats, and are not aware of how they come across to Republicans. So they think they have a representative sample, but they really don't. It can be explained simply by pollsters mainly living in large cities, and not really understanding rural Americans.
      - kenjackson 6y ago
        Why did this just start happening relatively recently?
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Because polling response rates fell off a cliff over the past decade or two, leaving a sample population much different than was historically available. (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-th...)
        kenjackson 6y ago
        Is that because of cell phones or some other reason?
vimax 6y ago
I think he's implying that individual humans have their own motives different from those conducting the polls, and you shouldn't expect completely reliable data without incentivizing those you are polling to be truthful.
exmicrosoldier 6y ago
It does not seem implausible that supporters of a group that participates in rampant types of voter supression, gerrymandering, throwing away ballots, & sueing to prevent votes being counted would be afraid of lying to nosy strangers.
jejones3141 6y ago
Could be a conspiracy, could be concern that being targeted if they are somehow identified as Trump supporters.
droptablemain 6y ago
I find it far more likely that polling methods are flawed than Trump supporters are intelligent and organized enough to engage in a mass deception campaign.

CameronNemo 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification

heavyset_go 6y ago

It's likely that there is a demographic that doesn't trust or like the media apparatus, and choose not to participate in polling at all, as well.

saeranv 6y ago

Thus far it actually seems to be due different response rates between Republican versus Democratic voters. Democrats seem more likely to respond to pollsters. Of course pollsters already know this, so they weight the samples to reflect underlying demographics, but it gets tricky to do this accurately if your surveying response rate is 1% to 2%. And of course... the forecast modelers know this. Which is what Gelman discusses in his post. Given that they now have 2016, and 2020 as examples of presidential polling errors, modelers need to shift their priors in a number of ways to account for what looks like a persistent undersampling of GOP voters.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Of course pollsters already know this, so they weight the samples to reflect underlying demographics That doesn't actually help unless the difference in response rate is explained by the underlying demographics. If it is correlated with preferences on the issues polled even controlling for non-preference demographics, it's not going to be correctable by that means, nor is it going to be measurable so that it can be corrected. OTOH, if it is a long-term consistent effect tied to partisan presidential voting preferences across election (and not, e.g., tied to the particular transitory trends, or evolving significantly over time) you could, as a poll-based forecaster, correct for the effect without measuring the correlation in preference and response rates by adjusting how you draw forecasts from polling data by correctingnbased on empirical election results and their relation to polls.
JeremyNT 6y ago
> And of course... the forecast modelers know this. Which is what Gelman discusses in his post. Given that they now have 2016, and 2020 as examples of presidential polling errors, modelers need to shift their priors in a number of ways to account for what looks like a persistent undersampling of GOP voters. In the article, he mentions the simplest and probably most correct way to do this: reduce the confidence these models have in the accuracy of the polling. The top line number he threw out as feeling "good" about was 75% for a Biden win. As it is, it's becoming difficult to find any value in these models because the events they represent as outliers seem to be consistently occurring. On the other hand, if they adjust to more accurately reflect the uncertainty in the the polls, eventually everything starts looking close to a coin toss - in which case they have no practical value, either.

dragonwriter 6y ago

Lying or other deliberate strategy probably isn't the issue. Propensity to participate in polls having even a slight correlation to preferences on the issues being polled will create a systematic polling error, however, and it's an effect that is difficult to measure because how do you measure the preferences of nonrespondents?

s9w 6y ago

It's no wonder people lie about their vote when the wrong answer can get them into trouble.

gpm 6y ago

Sort of, but if people lie predictably you can still poll accurately (or at least build accurate models from your polls). Without coordination a bunch of independent actors are generally predictable, because any random choice they makes averages out to the mean choice. With coordination the pollsters should be capable of finding out about it too. So I think lying to polls only works while it's still rare enough (in terms of # of elections that it happens in) that the pollsters aren't accounting for it.