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Before the election, I applied the theory of “shy Trump voter”. Found the research that about 5% of dem leaning and 10% of gop leaning poll respondents basicall
by mynegation 6y ago
Before the election, I applied the theory of “shy Trump voter”. Found the research that about 5% of dem leaning and 10% of gop leaning poll respondents basically lie that they are undecided. I took the average of polls from 538 and allocated undecided voters in accordance with numbers above.
The result was very well aligned with actual results and prediction markets. Adjusted numbers predicted that FL, NC, GA, AZ would go to Trump and Biden margins in WI, MI, and PA would be much thinner than predicted by 538.
Outside of GA and AZ that turned out to be on point and even in GA and AZ Biden margins were razor thin. Personally I think that Biden has to thank Stacey Abrams for Georgia, and I am not sure what happened in AZ, maybe people are more outspoken there than elsewhere.
Now, there are also opinions that there is no such thing as shy Trump voter and my calculation could be just dumb luck.
- smt88 6y agoThere isn't good evidence of shy Trump voters so far, but I don't think you had dumb luck. The problem seems to have been that pollsters didn't perfectly weight their results. Democrats were more likely to be at home (due to white collar skew, taking pandemic more seriously, and being in places with more restrictions) and also more likely to respond to polls. That is, in practice, a "shy Trump voter" problem. It's not that their ashamed of Trump, but rather that they didn't answer polls at the rate they were expected to.
- rm_-rf_slash 6y agoBingo. Pollsters can’t say for certain who a declined invitation plans to vote doe.
- notahacker 6y agoAnd more specifically in a contemporary US context, its likely non-respondents lean Trump (his messaging and base is much more critical of polling and media in general). Whilst pollsters are not unaware of this and can factor it into weightings to some extent, they don't have any data to work with in figuring out whether this cohort is more likely to turn out than previous elections.
- kevinmchugh 6y agoDo you know if the polls you were adjusting had been weighted for the differing propensity for lying by party identification?
- mynegation 6y agoThey were not. The polls were weighted by age, gender, location, and (the lesson from 2016) level of education. Final 538 numbers did the additional weighting with past electoral results and registered party affiliation I believe. I took the numbers as weighted by pollera but without additional massage from FiveThirtyEight.