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And the other way, you can’t make up for bad sampling with response count; the classic case study is the Litery Digest poll of the 1936 US presidential election
by karatinversion 5y ago
And the other way, you can’t make up for bad sampling with response count; the classic case study is the Litery Digest poll of the 1936 US presidential election, which polled over 2 million people but got the result wrong by over 30 percentage points.
- dredmorbius 5y agoRight. "Dewey Beats Truman" is another notorious example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29757119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29757119 As household telephone service became near-universal, telephone surveys did become highly valuable and generally accurate in measuring public opinon. That's reversed over the past decade or so as both practices (refusal to pick up unknown calls) and service (landline service is at or below 20% in many parts of the US) have radically reformed. Political pollsters have commented on this at length, and it's a major concern. See Nate Silver at https://fivethirtyeight.com https://fivethirtyeight.com among others.