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The important thing isn't people lying to pollsters, its people lying to pollsters in a way that's coordinated with a particular demographic or voting block. I
by joshuamorton 6y ago
The important thing isn't people lying to pollsters, its people lying to pollsters in a way that's coordinated with a particular demographic or voting block.
If 10% of people surveyed, at random, lie to the pollsters and choose the "opposite" candidate out of spite, you'll actually see a sort of reversion to the mean compared to the actual opinions.
- kube-system 6y agoAssuming that people are lying at random. I would bet there is a significant correlation with voting habits -- particularly in this election cycle. Why wouldn't someone who holds the view that polls are corrupt and biased have their attitude towards answering them affected by that?
- joshuamorton 6y ago> Why wouldn't someone who holds the view that polls are corrupt and biased have their attitude towards answering them affected by that? If your opinion was that polls were biased against your candidate, how would that make you answer? Is it more likely to make you answer in favor of your candidate, answer in favor of the other candidate, or go out of your way to participate in polls to "fight back" against the bias? You can invent a narrative that supports pretty much any activity. Only some of these narratives have any data behind them. As far as I'm aware the best-supported theory by data isn't that people intentionally lie, but that they simply don't participate in polls because they narrative pushed by republican campaigns is that the polls are always wrong. This is, we'll say, half true. What I'm interested in, now that the republican talking point is that the actual polls don't matter, since Democrats are stealing the election anyway, is if Republican turnout will similarly decrease.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]