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Is there some analysis why the polls didn't correctly predict the result? A failure in representative polls like this should be avoided with statistical method

Is there some analysis why the polls didn't correctly predict the result? A failure in representative polls like this should be avoided with statistical methods.

nojs 2y ago
The betting odds were not particularly close, especially in the last few weeks. It’s better to look at these rather than polling.
astrange 2y ago
The polls all said it was 50/50. They seem to be very accurate so far.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Trump seemed to have a head start early on, it really didn't feel like a close call somehow.
  - vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
    Do you mean early in the counting? Surely thay doesn't matter.
    - agumonkey 2y ago
      yeah it's was a fuzzy comment, i guess you mean the important/big states are always known last, but he really was ahead all along with a comfortable margin
      - drawkward 2y ago
        The order in which the votes are counted dows not matter!
        rightbyte 2y ago
        He should have written "If it is a close race the order matter for the perception of who will win".
  - Hasnep 2y ago
    But it wasn't actually a race, the votes were all finished being cast and were just being counted, so concepts like "having a head start" or "being ahead" don't really apply.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      The live-feed counting process really messes with people's heads. Trump used this confusion to great effect in creating the conspiracy theory about election stealing ("we were winning"), but it's not only the right wing that gets it confused. It feels like there has to be a better way to present the data to make it more obvious what's actually happening.
      - odo1242 2y ago
        Yeah, I personally believe that states should agree to collectively wait till the day after to release all election results at once. That way there's not as much confusion.
Rinzler89 2y ago
[flagged]
- astrange 2y ago
  That obviously doesn't work; how do you know which direction discourages voters? Most campaigns' whole marketing approach relies on texting voters 2000 times a day saying they're about to lose.
  - t-3 2y ago
    Did anyone else feel like the incessant texts from political spammers made you not want to vote the candidate spamming you? Having to block 5 new numbers every time I picked up my phone for the past month was really frustrating.
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      I didn’t get a single text. I guess I’m doing something right. I hate spam texts.
      - t-3 2y ago
        Either your state didn't make the information available to anyone who claims to a political activist, or you managed to avoid having a phone number linked to your voter registration.
- sixothree 2y ago
  What’s your evidence for that claim?
- dkdbejwi383 2y ago
  I don't think there is some kind of grand conspiracy where nefarious groups are out to "get" everyone. More likely, it's what you see with any data set that produces incorrect results: the wrong data in.
- everdrive 2y ago
disgruntledphd2 2y ago
If you look at the polls, they were incredibly close. This result is totally consistent with the polls, given the margin of error.
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  Harris won by around 5 points in NJ, Biden won NJ in 2020 by 16 points. That is a far wider swing than any poll predicted.
  - mbg721 2y ago
    People in a non-swing state figure "yolo" and vote for their emotional favorite, because they're dissatisfied with the status quo and have no other way to express it?
    - DiscourseFan 2y ago
      Well, it was close enough that it should worry the Dems and put NJ in play for Republics in the near future. NJ has not always voted consistently for democrats.
    - manquer 2y ago
      The question is not why there was a swing, any number of reasons can be attributed ex post facto. The point is no poll caught any of the swings at all. To win with this margin Trump the polls can hardly be tied and be called accurate. The result is not a close at all, and it is not about swing states and electoral college swings. Trump is winning the popular vote by a large margin something he has never be able to do so before.
      - mbg721 2y ago
        That's easy to explain--cultural and media institutions have disparaged Republican voters for so long that Trump voters inherently distrust pollsters. They might or might not turn out in a given election, but they have nothing to gain by telling anybody.
trynumber9 2y ago
I checked 538 before the election and they had Trump winning more often than not, but very close.
DiscourseFan 2y ago
Yes, polls often tend to privilege the privileged, Harris voters skewed greatly towards higher average incomes and college education. And also, according to an exit poll, that the majority of Trump's voters decided to vote for him within the past week. It's generally been the case that populist politicians are underestimated by polling because they can't control for these factors.
fcanesin 2y ago
AtlasIntel did. I met Thiago (CTO) in Rio and Boston while he was doing his math PhD at Harvard, he is nice person and a fine mathematician: their methodology uses online polling on social media with micro-targeting. I only assume competitors are not leveraging social media as well as they are. Roman, the CEO, said they will donate all their raw data from the final polls to Roper Center at Cornell for academic research[1]. [1] https://x.com/andrei__roman/status/1854051400273244534 https://x.com/andrei__roman/status/1854051400273244534
- fernandotakai 2y ago
  atlas intel has got so many elections correctly that i really don't understand why other pollsters are not copying their methodologies. even nate silver called then the most accurate pollster during the 2020 race.
  - fcanesin 2y ago
    Você sabe porque Fernando: https://x.com/ajlamesa/status/1854037599641313366 https://x.com/ajlamesa/status/1854037599641313366
    - fernandotakai 2y ago
      engraçado, eu acabei de ver esse post no reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1gkq7k7/atlas_intel_apology/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1gkq7k7/at...
everdrive 2y ago
What I heard recently is that the 2020 polls were actually less accurate than the 2016 polls. (the 2020 polls simply accurately predicted the winner, so there wasn't so much controversy.) From that standpoint, it's not clear that polling has had very good accuracy from 2016. What I'm not sure about is why pollsters are not able to adjust their models towards more accuracy, but it does seem to be a longitudinal problem.
Tuna-Fish 2y ago
The polls were actually surprisingly close. The final margin between the candidates in key states will be smaller than a reasonable margin of error for any poll. The margin in Pennsylvania will continue to shrink, as the only place with lots of votes left to count is Philadelphia. Michigan might still flip blue, because the only place with votes to count is Detroit. Arizona is still a total coin toss, with 51k vote difference and >1200k votes left to count. Wisconsin is going to be close too, although it will likely stay red. None of that matters when there are less ballots left to count than the margin in PA, but still, the message from the polls before election was "this will be a nailbiter", and it kind of was.
avazhi 2y ago
Same exact thing that happened in 2016: if you repeatedly demonise a section of the population, don’t expect that section of the population to be honest with you about its opinions when those opinions are what led you to demonise it in the first place.
- MrScruff 2y ago
  I would say from the outside American politics seems to have devolved into this ultra-polarised culture war/identity politics that doesn't seem to benefit the left at all electorally. It probably helps the biggest proponents of it (on either side) in terms of playing to their base, but it feels like it's overall a net win for the right. But I don't know how big a factor this is in reality versus the economy.
- iainmerrick 2y ago
  What are you talking about? In 2016, the majority of outlets gave Clinton a 90% chance or more. This time almost everyone said it was 50:50. The result is somewhat similar, the predictions could hardly be more different.
  - SilverBirch 2y ago
    Whilst this is objectively true - this result is basically within the margin of error of most polls. I highly doubt this argument is going to be accepted by most people. It'll be exactly like Nate Silver screaming into the void for the last 8 years pointing out he gave Trump a ~30% chance of winning and that happens... 30% of the time!
    - variadix 2y ago
      This isn’t an interesting statement. I could pull any numbers out of a hat in (0, 1) as probabilities and regardless of the outcome could use the same excuse because there is only a single event to observe.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    No, they didn't. For one, they said Clinton had a 70% chance of winning. But perhaps more importantly, people's poor understanding of stats meant that many people interpreted that as "She's going to get 70% of the vote" (i.e., a landslide, "and so I don't need to vote").
arp242 2y ago
Eh? All the polls basically said "we don't know, either can win", maybe followed with "X is slightly more likely to win". Also note that a "90% / 10% change to win" is not necessarily "wrong" if the 10% candidate wins. Anyone who has played an RPG will tell you that 90% chance to hit is far from certain. Maybe if there had been 100 elections, Clinton would have won 90 of them.
getnormality 2y ago
Polling has fundamental issues that can't be solved with statistics. The biggest one is the unknown difference between who responds to the poll and who votes. And poll response areas are very low these days - I've heard well under 1% is common (that is, less than 1 out of 100 individuals contacted by the pollster answer the questions). Nate Silver nailed this in the 2016 election. He said Trump's victory there was consistent with historically normal polling errors. What may have been less widely appreciated is these errors are not related to causes like limited sample size that are straightforwardly amenable to statistical analysis. They come from the deeper problems with polling and the way those problems shift under our feet a little bit with each election.
atoav 2y ago
One experience I had (coming from an Austrian right wing province) is that a significant share of polled people will not reveal to the pollster they are voting for the xenophobic candidate, because they don't want to be seen as a bigot. It is like when your doctor is asking you if you eat fast food — some people will downplay it because they know it is wrong, but do it anyways in a "weak" moment when nobody is looking. So suddenly in my village where I know everybody 56% voted for the right wing candidate, yet everybody¹ claimed not to do that when asked before or after. ¹: except one or two open Nazis
- lmz 2y ago
  This has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_factor
  - the5avage 2y ago
    This is the most likely explaination imo. But even then it should be possible to use bayes rule to price it into the result.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    This is the way it was with Nixon. After he was finally disgraced fully enough to resign with some remaining dignity, you couldn't find anybody who admitted to voting for him. And he had been re-elected to a second term !
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Even outside the polls. Trump rallies really started to empty out in the last weeks.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Polling isn't merely a reporting of raw responses, but a calibrating of those responses to known bias factors. Those might be psychological (as you describe) where people are reluctant to reveal actual preferences, but also include numerous others: - Who does or does not have a phone. - Who will or won't answer a phone. - Specific target demographics, under the rubric of "stratified random sampling". Just a few off the top of my head. As I'd mentioned upstream, political polling has regular calibration events called "elections", and following those events biases and adjustment factors, most falling out of statistical analysis and correlations, rather than "gut feels", are updated. The problem for the US seems to be that the biases are accelerating well in advance of those adjustments, as my own poll-vs-vote analysis shows: Thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42060547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42060547> Most robust analysis / results here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42064420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42064420>
tessierashpool9 2y ago
"the polls" are often just part of a narrative to influence the outcome.
- deleted 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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eigenspace 2y ago
You didn't listen to what the pollsters were saying. What they said was that they could not predict the outcome, and were giving basically 50/50 odds of either candidate winning, which is essentially just another way of saying "I have no idea". Just because their odds were 50/50 though, does not mean the outcome would be close. The pollsters were all warning that the swing states would likely be strongly correlated, so if a candidate performed strongly in one swing state, they'd probably perform strongly in all of them.
- qrybam 2y ago
  Would it be fair to say that Zuck had some idea (and for some time)? Otherwise he’d have no reason to write the letter about interference.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  the5avage is asking why the polls 'failed', that is, could not predict the result despite the clarity of the outcome. Being unable to compute an answer is the same thing as failing for pollsters.
  - joelthelion 2y ago
    I disagree. There's a big difference between saying "kamala will win, it's certain", and "we don't know".
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      That's true, lacking confidence is less of a failure than confidently getting it wrong. But they weren't actually saying "we don't know". They were predicting a split election. Do pollsters even have a way to report that they lack enough confidence to give a prediction? I rarely see CIs on reported poll results so presumably they'd have to just refuse to publish any prediction at all, which clearly, they weren't doing. Nate Silver has recently written about the clear problems in polling, and in particular the herd-like way they were reporting implausible numbers: https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-state https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-st...
red_admiral 2y ago
It seems prediction markets did better on this one: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-... (and this was while Biden was still in the race)
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
csomar 2y ago
Heavy partisan bias. Polymarket predict this quite well. Putting your money on the line is still a thing.
- vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
  Only if this attracts professional punters. I imagine pros prefer to punt on preductible things like 1000 soccer games they modelled using a million datapoints rather than 1 hard to predict election. A combination of vast predictive data and Kelly Criterion. I imagine the election money was dumb. It may have happen to be right.
tomohawk 2y ago
People no longer feel comfortable telling the truth about their votes. https://www.axios.com/2024/10/30/election-gen-z-voting-lies https://www.axios.com/2024/10/30/election-gen-z-voting-lies
raldi 2y ago
The polls predict chance of winning, not share of the vote. If I predict a coin toss to be 50/50 that doesn’t mean I expect it to land on its side.
dotancohen 2y ago
All models are wrong. Some models are useful. That pool was apparently more the former than the later.
refurb 2y ago
They weren't that far off. Most were hovering around a tie with a margin of error of +/- 2-3%. Trump won many of those states by 2-3%.
- the5avage 2y ago
  Yes but when the result is always skewed to one side then - even if the result is within the margin - the predicted mean is wrong. Otherwise the real result would be distributed around the mean within the margin of error. There is some bias and the polls did not correctly factor that into their statistical model.
vbezhenar 2y ago
I guess dead squirrel changed public opinion enough.
smallstepforman 2y ago
Busy people have no time to answer polsters. When you heavily critisize one group of supporters (and the social stigma associated with it), dont be suprised that in private they think differently. Finally, intentionally fabricating wrong poll results can psychologically influence weak minded (due to group think and our desire to comply with social norms). So it is immature to accept polls as a real indicator of what people think (especially in controversial political environment). In reality, a lot more people have traditional values when it comes to race, LGBT whatever, sexism, spiritual values, opinions on Russia, Israel etc. However in public they may be scared to voice their true opinions.
- ianhawes 2y ago
  Most polls are conducted via text message now and have fairly robust screening to weed out fake responses.
dredmorbius 2y ago
The polling margins were razor-thin. Pollsters such as Nate Silver were giving gut-takes of Red over Blue, e.g.: "Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election, but Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine" (Oct. 23, 2024) <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-results-trump-harris.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-re...> I've done a somewhat half-assed take tonight of comparing actual returns to latest pre-election polling by state Why that is, isn't clear. Political pollsters have been struggling for years with accuracy issues, particularly as landline usage falls (it's <20% in most states now), and unknown-caller blocking is more widely used (both on landlines and mobile devices). Polling does have periodic calibration events (we call those "elections"), but whatever biases the polls seem to experience in the US, it's apparently systemically exceeding adjustment factors. Polls / votes and deltas: QC State EV BP RP BV RV Bd Rd 4: AL 9 36 64 32 65 -4 1 4: AK 3 45 55 0 0 4: AZ 11 49 51 49 50 0 -1 4: AR 6 36 64 34 64 -2 0 4: CA 54 63 37 60 37 -3 0 4: CO 10 56 44 55 43 -1 -1 4: CT 7 59 41 54 44 -5 3 4: DC 3 92 7 90 7 -2 0 4: DE 3 58 42 56 42 -2 0 4: FL 30 47 53 43 56 -4 3 4: GA 16 49 51 48 51 -1 0 4: HI 4 64 36 0 0 4: ID 4 33 67 33 64 0 -3 4: IL 19 57 43 52 47 -5 4 4: IN 11 41 57 39 59 -2 2 4: IA 6 46 54 42 56 -4 2 4: KS 6 42 51 41 57 -1 6 4: KY 8 36 64 34 64 -2 0 4: LA 8 40 60 38 60 -2 0 4: ME 2 54 46 0 0 4: ME-1 1 61 39 0 0 4: ME-2 1 47 53 0 0 4: MD 10 64 36 60 37 -4 1 4: MA 11 64 36 62 35 -2 -1 4: MI 15 50 49 0 0 4: MN 10 53 47 0 0 4: MS 6 40 60 37 62 -3 2 4: MO 10 43 57 42 56 -1 -1 4: MT 4 41 59 33 64 -8 5 4: NE 4 41 59 42 56 1 -3 4: NE-2 1 54 46 0 0 4: NM 5 54 46 51 47 -3 1 4: NV 6 50 50 0 0 4: NH 4 53 47 52 47 -1 0 4: NJ 14 57 43 51 46 -6 3 4: NY 28 59 41 55 44 -4 3 4: NC 16 49 51 48 51 -1 0 4: ND 3 33 67 31 67 -2 0 4: OH 17 46 54 44 55 -2 1 4: OK 7 33 67 32 66 -1 -1 4: OR 8 56 44 55 43 -1 -1 4: PA 19 50 50 0 0 4: RI 4 58 42 55 42 -3 0 4: SC 9 44 56 40 58 -4 2 4: SD 3 36 64 29 69 -7 5 4: TN 11 38 62 34 64 -4 2 4: TX 40 46 54 42 57 -4 3 4: UT 6 39 61 43 54 4 -7 4: VT 3 67 34 64 32 -3 -2 4: VA 13 53 47 51 47 -2 0 4: WA 12 59 41 58 39 -1 -2 4: WV 4 30 70 28 70 -2 0 4: WI 10 50 49 0 0 4: WY 3 73 27 70 28 -3 1 Blue votes: 43 Red votes: 43 Blue delta: -2.49 Red delta: 0.63 Key: - QC: A parsing QC value (number of raw fields) - State: 2-char state code, dash-number indicates individual EVs for NE and ME. - EV: Electoral votes - BP: Blue polling - RP: Red polling - BV: Blue vote return - RV: Red vote return - Bd: Blue delta (vote - poll) - Rd: Red delta (vote - poll) The last two results are the cumulative average deltas. Blue consistently performed ~2.5 points below polls, red performed ~0.6 points above polls. Data are rounded to nearest whole percent (I'd like to re-enter data to 0.1% precision and re-run, though overall effect should be similar). Deltas are computed only where voting returns are >0. Data are hand-entered from 538 and ABC returns pages. Blue consistently polled slightly higher than performance. Polls don't seem to include third parties (mostly Green, some state returns include RFK or others). There are all but certainly coding/data entry errors here, though for illustration the point should hold.
davedx 2y ago
If you read on the methodology of some of these 'election models', you'll understand there's a lot of narrative chasing that goes on (or even just "herding towards the least controversial number"). For example, from Nate Silver's blog: > The Silver Bulletin polling averages are a little fancy. They adjust for whether polls are conducted among registered or likely voters and house effects. They weight more reliable polls more heavily. And they use national polls to make inferences about state polls and vice versa. It requires a few extra CPU cycles — but the reward is a more stable average that doesn’t get psyched out by outliers. All this weighting and massaging and inferencing results in results that are basically wrong. Come Election Night he basically threw the whole thing in the trash too!
kragen 2y ago
The polls were predicting a near-tie for months. That was the correct prediction.
- tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  Did they get an unlucky dice roll then?
  - kragen 2y ago
    Unlucky in the sense that it would have been less bad if Trump had lost?
    - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
      Im suggesting an election is not a random event. Sampling error terminology is being mistaken for probability of the underlying thing. There was no 50/50 chance of the voter base waking up and instead voting for Kamala yesterday.
      - kragen 2y ago
        Are you coming at this from a frequentist perspective, a Bayesian perspective, or some other formulation of probability? From a frequentist perspective, it makes no sense to talk about probabilities of the outcomes of processes that can't be repeated, such as elections. So the question is then, "Why couldn't the polls predict a result?" And we know the answer: because the polls weren't precise enough. We already knew that. From a Bayesian perspective, lack of knowledge is the same thing as nondeterminism in the underlying processes. So, to a Bayesian, you're just wrong; there was a 52/48 chance of the voter base waking up and instead voting for Kamala yesterday. If from some other formulation, which?
        tightbookkeeper 2y ago
        > From a frequentist perspective This is so confused. The probability models are designed to describe situations where cause and effect is not known.causes still exist whether you can repeat them in an experiment, You are confusing logical models with real world decisions and actions.
pfortuny 2y ago
Single-event statistics projections are pretty useless. Much more so when the “projections” are 50/50.
amusingimpala75 2y ago
Historically (last two elections) the polls have been about 2% further left than the actual result. Thus a 50/50 could/should b be interpreted in Trump’s favor
inthebin 2y ago
Because a percentage of people who vote trump tell everyone they will vote dem to not be bullied or frozen out by their friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. Dr Phil described it well I think.
- eschaton 2y ago
  Almost like they know it’s wrong.
  - l0t0b0r0s 2y ago
    Whats wrong is abandoning family and friends over political bullshit
    - eschaton 2y ago
      That’s true about things like tax policy. That’s not true when it comes to things like bigotry.
trickstra 2y ago
I have yet to see any polls predict any result in any election.
Etheryte 2y ago
Bookies are a way better indicator than polls, I've opted to stop checking polls and only follow the bookies. Nearly all of them gave Trump at least a few percentage points of an edge, at a minimum. Now I'm not saying they're infallible, but they make or break their business by figuring these odds out, so there's a lot of skin in the game for them to be on point.
athrowaway3z 2y ago
I've yet to see anyone else mention it but my theory: Messaging is build on focus groups, and tweaked to get the best results by both sides. That group is the same group that does polls. Its a Goodhart's law in action: Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
Davidzheng 2y ago
The polling system even without herding is broken because no one wants to respond to random texts
diognesofsinope 2y ago
Vegas and prediction markets consistently had Trump as the favorites. Polling companies are in the business of media deals and government contracts. They will develop methodology and reporting to that end and the money is in "a close and contested race", even if it won't be.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Flipside: prediction markets absolutely missed Harris's pick of Walz. I'd looked those up at the time. Of course, if we want to assess which methodology is more accurate, we'll need more than two cherry-picked examples. Methodologically, prediction markets are nonrandom sampling from a pool of self-selected rich people (those with sufficient discretionary income to place bets), tempered by several influences, among which profit motive is only one. See the case of assassination markets for potential confounding factors: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market> And from what I'm familiar with in other forms of gaming, gamblers often lose, and often bigly. There is some research on the question: David M. Rothschild, "Forecasting Elections: Comparing Prediction Markets, Polls, and Their Biases", January 2009, Public Opinion Quarterly 73(5). DOI:10.1093/poq/nfp082 <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228306045_Forecasting_Elections_Comparing_Prediction_Markets_Polls_and_Their_Biases https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228306045_Forecasti...> Joyce E. Berg, Forrest D. Nelson, Thomas A. Rietz, "Prediction market accuracy in the long run" International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 24, Issue 2, April–June 2008, Pages 285-300 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2008.03.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2008.03.007> "A model incorporating markets that allow betting on elections suggests a role in prognostications" (31 October 2024) <https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/prediction-markets-polls-economic-indicators-better-election-forecasting/ https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/prediction-markets-polls-ec...> Referencing Mikhail Chernov, Vadim Elenev, and Dongho Song, "The Comovement of Voter Preferences: Insights from U.S. Presidential Election Prediction Markets Beyond Polls" (28 October 2024) <https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/voter_preferences_updated.pdf https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/...> (PDF).
  - rightbyte 2y ago
bitsandboots 2y ago
The conversation has become so polarized that people are preferring to hide their intentions to avoid confrontation.
dogleash 2y ago
> Is there some analysis why the polls didn't correctly predict the result? The people in a swing state choosing to spend time responding to polls are insufficiently representative. They're drowning in advertisements, calls, texts, unexpected people at their door and randos on the street. Why would they give time to a pollster?
sanderjd 2y ago
Seems like they pretty much did? The polls said "a close race in each of the swing states, which either candidate could win". And that's that happened, no?
sanderjd 2y ago
Seems like they pretty much did? The polls said "a close race in each of the swing states, which either candidate could win". And I that's what happened, no?
vagab0nd 2y ago
Why do you think the polls would correctly predict the result? Use Polymarket instead, where money is on the line.
- seanw444 2y ago
  I kept hearing people laugh at Polymarket. "It's not a real poll!" But it guessed correctly when almost none of the polls did. I think I'll continue to listen to betting markets.
- odo1242 2y ago
  Thing is, prediction markets tend to be gamed by people who bet large amounts of money. I used a (play money) prediction market platform before and there was literally a "markets that get easily gamed by whales" section on the website.
  - cjbillington 2y ago
    If you're talking about "whalebait" markets on manifold, that's a bit disingenuous - these are markets where the thing you're betting about is related to trading behaviour itself, i.e. self-referential markets. I don't disagree that the one french dude betting 30M on Trump on polymarket showed that there isn't enough liquidity in such markets for such distortions to be corrected, but whalebait on Manifold is not really related.
- vharuck 2y ago
  For most things, I'd be happy to accept a market's wisdom. But after seeing the meme stock phenomenon, I didn't trust them to fairly judge anything related to Trump.
IAmGraydon 2y ago
Historically, the polls tend to skew about 3% left on average. So if the left is showing a 3% lead, it's more likely that reality is they're even. Have a look at this site - they were tied nationally with Trump having a healthy lead in most swing states: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/202... It was no surprise he won, IMO.
torginus 2y ago
All the polls I've been reading (including ones like betting sites, who lose money by being biased), were predicting this exact outcome.
Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
They did. The pollsters that were close in 2020 were close in 2024 as well. (Rasmussen, AtlasIntel) My explanation for this is that most polls were fabricated, showing enthusiasm for (D) which wasn't there. Basically, a form of propaganda. The most striking example here is Selzer, with that Harris+3 Iowa poll the day before the election.
- seanw444 2y ago
  Just like 2016.
eigenvalue 2y ago
Yes, here is a very good breakdown of how polls were systematically wrong by the French guy who just made over $40mm of profit betting on Trump in the prediction markets: https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1853818243003125934 https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1853818243003125934 He put Trump's true probability of winning at 90% and a win of the popular vote at 75%.
- _dark_matter_ 2y ago
  His first point - weighting by 2020 vote - is something that Nate Cohn pointed out very concretely as a methodological choice that wouldn't be obvious until the election [0]. Even in retrospect that seems fair, at least based on the analysis that Nate put together. Worth pointing out though that most pollsters _have_ been weighting by 2020 vote, so in general this isn't a fair critique of the entire polling industry. There are other fair critiques though, for example, that there are entire populations of people that are almost impossible to reach now (e.g. those who don't answer unknown numbers, young people, etc.). [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-el...
- odo1242 2y ago
  I feel like this is confirmation bias, especially since it's a very large number of polls from reputable organizations being compared against one person's opinion. Even if the true probability isn't 50% I doubt it's that far off.
culi 2y ago
The polls did pretty well this election. They underestimated Trump, but by less than previously. Polls pretty overwhelmingly showed a 50/50 race in every swing state but those odds were always correlated since they're not independent events People are looking at the popular vote and freaking out but lets not forget that there's still 7 million left to count in California and it's expected to net Harris almost 3 million votes
Molitor5901 2y ago
This is purely devil's advocate: Many polls may just be political levers, designed and executed with a predetermined outcome so it can be used in mass media. There is an undeniable tilt to mainstream news companies and almost confirmation bias in their polling.. Does make me wonder.
booleandilemma 2y ago
The president of US called half of American citizens garbage, that definitely had something to do with it. Hillary pulled the same shit, calling half the country "deplorables". Keep insulting American citizens and see what happens.
- eschaton 2y ago
  They prove you right?
  - booleandilemma 2y ago
    This attitude, your attitude, is the problem with our country today.
    - eschaton 2y ago
      Yeah, it’s not the bigots and ignoramuses and accelerationists who vote for fascists that are the problem, it’s “this attitude” of not treating bigots and ignoramuses with kid gloves that’s the problem.
- altpaddle 2y ago
  Give me a fucking break. Trump trashes segments of America for years and gets a pass but if a democrat makes a single pissed off comment it's a big deal.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
People who are saying "the polls were wrong" didn't look at them carefully enough. This is a retweet of Nate Silver's analysis showing that the most probable outcome, with nearly a 25% chance, was Trump sweeping the swing states. Yes, added up with all the other possible outcomes, the race was very close, but this was still the most likely outcome, and by a large margin: https://x.com/LPDonovan/status/1854265746601488727 https://x.com/LPDonovan/status/1854265746601488727

Is there some analysis why the polls didn't correctly predict the result? A failure in representative polls like this should be avoided with statistical methods.

nojs 2y ago

The betting odds were not particularly close, especially in the last few weeks. It’s better to look at these rather than polling.

astrange 2y ago

The polls all said it was 50/50. They seem to be very accurate so far.

agumonkey 2y ago
Trump seemed to have a head start early on, it really didn't feel like a close call somehow.
- vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
  Do you mean early in the counting? Surely thay doesn't matter.
  - agumonkey 2y ago
    yeah it's was a fuzzy comment, i guess you mean the important/big states are always known last, but he really was ahead all along with a comfortable margin
    - drawkward 2y ago
      The order in which the votes are counted dows not matter!
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        He should have written "If it is a close race the order matter for the perception of who will win".
- Hasnep 2y ago
  But it wasn't actually a race, the votes were all finished being cast and were just being counted, so concepts like "having a head start" or "being ahead" don't really apply.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    The live-feed counting process really messes with people's heads. Trump used this confusion to great effect in creating the conspiracy theory about election stealing ("we were winning"), but it's not only the right wing that gets it confused. It feels like there has to be a better way to present the data to make it more obvious what's actually happening.
    - odo1242 2y ago
      Yeah, I personally believe that states should agree to collectively wait till the day after to release all election results at once. That way there's not as much confusion.

Rinzler89 2y ago

[flagged]

astrange 2y ago
That obviously doesn't work; how do you know which direction discourages voters? Most campaigns' whole marketing approach relies on texting voters 2000 times a day saying they're about to lose.
- t-3 2y ago
  Did anyone else feel like the incessant texts from political spammers made you not want to vote the candidate spamming you? Having to block 5 new numbers every time I picked up my phone for the past month was really frustrating.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    I didn’t get a single text. I guess I’m doing something right. I hate spam texts.
    - t-3 2y ago
      Either your state didn't make the information available to anyone who claims to a political activist, or you managed to avoid having a phone number linked to your voter registration.
sixothree 2y ago
What’s your evidence for that claim?
dkdbejwi383 2y ago
I don't think there is some kind of grand conspiracy where nefarious groups are out to "get" everyone. More likely, it's what you see with any data set that produces incorrect results: the wrong data in.
everdrive 2y ago

disgruntledphd2 2y ago

If you look at the polls, they were incredibly close. This result is totally consistent with the polls, given the margin of error.

DiscourseFan 2y ago
Harris won by around 5 points in NJ, Biden won NJ in 2020 by 16 points. That is a far wider swing than any poll predicted.
- mbg721 2y ago
  People in a non-swing state figure "yolo" and vote for their emotional favorite, because they're dissatisfied with the status quo and have no other way to express it?
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    Well, it was close enough that it should worry the Dems and put NJ in play for Republics in the near future. NJ has not always voted consistently for democrats.
  - manquer 2y ago
    The question is not why there was a swing, any number of reasons can be attributed ex post facto. The point is no poll caught any of the swings at all. To win with this margin Trump the polls can hardly be tied and be called accurate. The result is not a close at all, and it is not about swing states and electoral college swings. Trump is winning the popular vote by a large margin something he has never be able to do so before.
    - mbg721 2y ago
      That's easy to explain--cultural and media institutions have disparaged Republican voters for so long that Trump voters inherently distrust pollsters. They might or might not turn out in a given election, but they have nothing to gain by telling anybody.

trynumber9 2y ago

I checked 538 before the election and they had Trump winning more often than not, but very close.

DiscourseFan 2y ago

Yes, polls often tend to privilege the privileged, Harris voters skewed greatly towards higher average incomes and college education. And also, according to an exit poll, that the majority of Trump's voters decided to vote for him within the past week. It's generally been the case that populist politicians are underestimated by polling because they can't control for these factors.

fcanesin 2y ago

AtlasIntel did. I met Thiago (CTO) in Rio and Boston while he was doing his math PhD at Harvard, he is nice person and a fine mathematician: their methodology uses online polling on social media with micro-targeting. I only assume competitors are not leveraging social media as well as they are. Roman, the CEO, said they will donate all their raw data from the final polls to Roper Center at Cornell for academic research[1]. [1] https://x.com/andrei__roman/status/1854051400273244534 https://x.com/andrei__roman/status/1854051400273244534

fernandotakai 2y ago
atlas intel has got so many elections correctly that i really don't understand why other pollsters are not copying their methodologies. even nate silver called then the most accurate pollster during the 2020 race.
- fcanesin 2y ago
  Você sabe porque Fernando: https://x.com/ajlamesa/status/1854037599641313366 https://x.com/ajlamesa/status/1854037599641313366
  - fernandotakai 2y ago
    engraçado, eu acabei de ver esse post no reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1gkq7k7/atlas_intel_apology/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/1gkq7k7/at...

everdrive 2y ago

What I heard recently is that the 2020 polls were actually less accurate than the 2016 polls. (the 2020 polls simply accurately predicted the winner, so there wasn't so much controversy.) From that standpoint, it's not clear that polling has had very good accuracy from 2016. What I'm not sure about is why pollsters are not able to adjust their models towards more accuracy, but it does seem to be a longitudinal problem.

Tuna-Fish 2y ago

The polls were actually surprisingly close. The final margin between the candidates in key states will be smaller than a reasonable margin of error for any poll. The margin in Pennsylvania will continue to shrink, as the only place with lots of votes left to count is Philadelphia. Michigan might still flip blue, because the only place with votes to count is Detroit. Arizona is still a total coin toss, with 51k vote difference and >1200k votes left to count. Wisconsin is going to be close too, although it will likely stay red. None of that matters when there are less ballots left to count than the margin in PA, but still, the message from the polls before election was "this will be a nailbiter", and it kind of was.

avazhi 2y ago

Same exact thing that happened in 2016: if you repeatedly demonise a section of the population, don’t expect that section of the population to be honest with you about its opinions when those opinions are what led you to demonise it in the first place.

MrScruff 2y ago
I would say from the outside American politics seems to have devolved into this ultra-polarised culture war/identity politics that doesn't seem to benefit the left at all electorally. It probably helps the biggest proponents of it (on either side) in terms of playing to their base, but it feels like it's overall a net win for the right. But I don't know how big a factor this is in reality versus the economy.
iainmerrick 2y ago
What are you talking about? In 2016, the majority of outlets gave Clinton a 90% chance or more. This time almost everyone said it was 50:50. The result is somewhat similar, the predictions could hardly be more different.
- SilverBirch 2y ago
  Whilst this is objectively true - this result is basically within the margin of error of most polls. I highly doubt this argument is going to be accepted by most people. It'll be exactly like Nate Silver screaming into the void for the last 8 years pointing out he gave Trump a ~30% chance of winning and that happens... 30% of the time!
  - variadix 2y ago
    This isn’t an interesting statement. I could pull any numbers out of a hat in (0, 1) as probabilities and regardless of the outcome could use the same excuse because there is only a single event to observe.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  No, they didn't. For one, they said Clinton had a 70% chance of winning. But perhaps more importantly, people's poor understanding of stats meant that many people interpreted that as "She's going to get 70% of the vote" (i.e., a landslide, "and so I don't need to vote").

arp242 2y ago

Eh? All the polls basically said "we don't know, either can win", maybe followed with "X is slightly more likely to win". Also note that a "90% / 10% change to win" is not necessarily "wrong" if the 10% candidate wins. Anyone who has played an RPG will tell you that 90% chance to hit is far from certain. Maybe if there had been 100 elections, Clinton would have won 90 of them.

getnormality 2y ago

Polling has fundamental issues that can't be solved with statistics. The biggest one is the unknown difference between who responds to the poll and who votes. And poll response areas are very low these days - I've heard well under 1% is common (that is, less than 1 out of 100 individuals contacted by the pollster answer the questions). Nate Silver nailed this in the 2016 election. He said Trump's victory there was consistent with historically normal polling errors. What may have been less widely appreciated is these errors are not related to causes like limited sample size that are straightforwardly amenable to statistical analysis. They come from the deeper problems with polling and the way those problems shift under our feet a little bit with each election.

atoav 2y ago

One experience I had (coming from an Austrian right wing province) is that a significant share of polled people will not reveal to the pollster they are voting for the xenophobic candidate, because they don't want to be seen as a bigot. It is like when your doctor is asking you if you eat fast food — some people will downplay it because they know it is wrong, but do it anyways in a "weak" moment when nobody is looking. So suddenly in my village where I know everybody 56% voted for the right wing candidate, yet everybody¹ claimed not to do that when asked before or after. ¹: except one or two open Nazis

lmz 2y ago
This has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_factor
- the5avage 2y ago
  This is the most likely explaination imo. But even then it should be possible to use bayes rule to price it into the result.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  This is the way it was with Nixon. After he was finally disgraced fully enough to resign with some remaining dignity, you couldn't find anybody who admitted to voting for him. And he had been re-elected to a second term !
agumonkey 2y ago
Even outside the polls. Trump rallies really started to empty out in the last weeks.
dredmorbius 2y ago
Polling isn't merely a reporting of raw responses, but a calibrating of those responses to known bias factors. Those might be psychological (as you describe) where people are reluctant to reveal actual preferences, but also include numerous others: - Who does or does not have a phone. - Who will or won't answer a phone. - Specific target demographics, under the rubric of "stratified random sampling". Just a few off the top of my head. As I'd mentioned upstream, political polling has regular calibration events called "elections", and following those events biases and adjustment factors, most falling out of statistical analysis and correlations, rather than "gut feels", are updated. The problem for the US seems to be that the biases are accelerating well in advance of those adjustments, as my own poll-vs-vote analysis shows: Thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42060547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42060547> Most robust analysis / results here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42064420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42064420>

tessierashpool9 2y ago

"the polls" are often just part of a narrative to influence the outcome.

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eigenspace 2y ago

You didn't listen to what the pollsters were saying. What they said was that they could not predict the outcome, and were giving basically 50/50 odds of either candidate winning, which is essentially just another way of saying "I have no idea". Just because their odds were 50/50 though, does not mean the outcome would be close. The pollsters were all warning that the swing states would likely be strongly correlated, so if a candidate performed strongly in one swing state, they'd probably perform strongly in all of them.

qrybam 2y ago
Would it be fair to say that Zuck had some idea (and for some time)? Otherwise he’d have no reason to write the letter about interference.
mike_hearn 2y ago
the5avage is asking why the polls 'failed', that is, could not predict the result despite the clarity of the outcome. Being unable to compute an answer is the same thing as failing for pollsters.
- joelthelion 2y ago
  I disagree. There's a big difference between saying "kamala will win, it's certain", and "we don't know".
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    That's true, lacking confidence is less of a failure than confidently getting it wrong. But they weren't actually saying "we don't know". They were predicting a split election. Do pollsters even have a way to report that they lack enough confidence to give a prediction? I rarely see CIs on reported poll results so presumably they'd have to just refuse to publish any prediction at all, which clearly, they weren't doing. Nate Silver has recently written about the clear problems in polling, and in particular the herd-like way they were reporting implausible numbers: https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-state https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-st...

red_admiral 2y ago

It seems prediction markets did better on this one: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-... (and this was while Biden was still in the race)

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

csomar 2y ago

Heavy partisan bias. Polymarket predict this quite well. Putting your money on the line is still a thing.

vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
Only if this attracts professional punters. I imagine pros prefer to punt on preductible things like 1000 soccer games they modelled using a million datapoints rather than 1 hard to predict election. A combination of vast predictive data and Kelly Criterion. I imagine the election money was dumb. It may have happen to be right.

tomohawk 2y ago

People no longer feel comfortable telling the truth about their votes. https://www.axios.com/2024/10/30/election-gen-z-voting-lies https://www.axios.com/2024/10/30/election-gen-z-voting-lies

raldi 2y ago

The polls predict chance of winning, not share of the vote. If I predict a coin toss to be 50/50 that doesn’t mean I expect it to land on its side.

dotancohen 2y ago

All models are wrong. Some models are useful. That pool was apparently more the former than the later.

refurb 2y ago

They weren't that far off. Most were hovering around a tie with a margin of error of +/- 2-3%. Trump won many of those states by 2-3%.

the5avage 2y ago
Yes but when the result is always skewed to one side then - even if the result is within the margin - the predicted mean is wrong. Otherwise the real result would be distributed around the mean within the margin of error. There is some bias and the polls did not correctly factor that into their statistical model.

vbezhenar 2y ago

I guess dead squirrel changed public opinion enough.

smallstepforman 2y ago

Busy people have no time to answer polsters. When you heavily critisize one group of supporters (and the social stigma associated with it), dont be suprised that in private they think differently. Finally, intentionally fabricating wrong poll results can psychologically influence weak minded (due to group think and our desire to comply with social norms). So it is immature to accept polls as a real indicator of what people think (especially in controversial political environment). In reality, a lot more people have traditional values when it comes to race, LGBT whatever, sexism, spiritual values, opinions on Russia, Israel etc. However in public they may be scared to voice their true opinions.

ianhawes 2y ago
Most polls are conducted via text message now and have fairly robust screening to weed out fake responses.

dredmorbius 2y ago

The polling margins were razor-thin. Pollsters such as Nate Silver were giving gut-takes of Red over Blue, e.g.: "Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election, but Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine" (Oct. 23, 2024) <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-results-trump-harris.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-re...> I've done a somewhat half-assed take tonight of comparing actual returns to latest pre-election polling by state Why that is, isn't clear. Political pollsters have been struggling for years with accuracy issues, particularly as landline usage falls (it's <20% in most states now), and unknown-caller blocking is more widely used (both on landlines and mobile devices). Polling does have periodic calibration events (we call those "elections"), but whatever biases the polls seem to experience in the US, it's apparently systemically exceeding adjustment factors. Polls / votes and deltas: QC State EV BP RP BV RV Bd Rd 4: AL 9 36 64 32 65 -4 1 4: AK 3 45 55 0 0 4: AZ 11 49 51 49 50 0 -1 4: AR 6 36 64 34 64 -2 0 4: CA 54 63 37 60 37 -3 0 4: CO 10 56 44 55 43 -1 -1 4: CT 7 59 41 54 44 -5 3 4: DC 3 92 7 90 7 -2 0 4: DE 3 58 42 56 42 -2 0 4: FL 30 47 53 43 56 -4 3 4: GA 16 49 51 48 51 -1 0 4: HI 4 64 36 0 0 4: ID 4 33 67 33 64 0 -3 4: IL 19 57 43 52 47 -5 4 4: IN 11 41 57 39 59 -2 2 4: IA 6 46 54 42 56 -4 2 4: KS 6 42 51 41 57 -1 6 4: KY 8 36 64 34 64 -2 0 4: LA 8 40 60 38 60 -2 0 4: ME 2 54 46 0 0 4: ME-1 1 61 39 0 0 4: ME-2 1 47 53 0 0 4: MD 10 64 36 60 37 -4 1 4: MA 11 64 36 62 35 -2 -1 4: MI 15 50 49 0 0 4: MN 10 53 47 0 0 4: MS 6 40 60 37 62 -3 2 4: MO 10 43 57 42 56 -1 -1 4: MT 4 41 59 33 64 -8 5 4: NE 4 41 59 42 56 1 -3 4: NE-2 1 54 46 0 0 4: NM 5 54 46 51 47 -3 1 4: NV 6 50 50 0 0 4: NH 4 53 47 52 47 -1 0 4: NJ 14 57 43 51 46 -6 3 4: NY 28 59 41 55 44 -4 3 4: NC 16 49 51 48 51 -1 0 4: ND 3 33 67 31 67 -2 0 4: OH 17 46 54 44 55 -2 1 4: OK 7 33 67 32 66 -1 -1 4: OR 8 56 44 55 43 -1 -1 4: PA 19 50 50 0 0 4: RI 4 58 42 55 42 -3 0 4: SC 9 44 56 40 58 -4 2 4: SD 3 36 64 29 69 -7 5 4: TN 11 38 62 34 64 -4 2 4: TX 40 46 54 42 57 -4 3 4: UT 6 39 61 43 54 4 -7 4: VT 3 67 34 64 32 -3 -2 4: VA 13 53 47 51 47 -2 0 4: WA 12 59 41 58 39 -1 -2 4: WV 4 30 70 28 70 -2 0 4: WI 10 50 49 0 0 4: WY 3 73 27 70 28 -3 1 Blue votes: 43 Red votes: 43 Blue delta: -2.49 Red delta: 0.63 Key: - QC: A parsing QC value (number of raw fields) - State: 2-char state code, dash-number indicates individual EVs for NE and ME. - EV: Electoral votes - BP: Blue polling - RP: Red polling - BV: Blue vote return - RV: Red vote return - Bd: Blue delta (vote - poll) - Rd: Red delta (vote - poll) The last two results are the cumulative average deltas. Blue consistently performed ~2.5 points below polls, red performed ~0.6 points above polls. Data are rounded to nearest whole percent (I'd like to re-enter data to 0.1% precision and re-run, though overall effect should be similar). Deltas are computed only where voting returns are >0. Data are hand-entered from 538 and ABC returns pages. Blue consistently polled slightly higher than performance. Polls don't seem to include third parties (mostly Green, some state returns include RFK or others). There are all but certainly coding/data entry errors here, though for illustration the point should hold.

davedx 2y ago

If you read on the methodology of some of these 'election models', you'll understand there's a lot of narrative chasing that goes on (or even just "herding towards the least controversial number"). For example, from Nate Silver's blog: > The Silver Bulletin polling averages are a little fancy. They adjust for whether polls are conducted among registered or likely voters and house effects. They weight more reliable polls more heavily. And they use national polls to make inferences about state polls and vice versa. It requires a few extra CPU cycles — but the reward is a more stable average that doesn’t get psyched out by outliers. All this weighting and massaging and inferencing results in results that are basically wrong. Come Election Night he basically threw the whole thing in the trash too!

kragen 2y ago

The polls were predicting a near-tie for months. That was the correct prediction.

tightbookkeeper 2y ago
Did they get an unlucky dice roll then?
- kragen 2y ago
  Unlucky in the sense that it would have been less bad if Trump had lost?
  - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
    Im suggesting an election is not a random event. Sampling error terminology is being mistaken for probability of the underlying thing. There was no 50/50 chance of the voter base waking up and instead voting for Kamala yesterday.
    - kragen 2y ago
      Are you coming at this from a frequentist perspective, a Bayesian perspective, or some other formulation of probability? From a frequentist perspective, it makes no sense to talk about probabilities of the outcomes of processes that can't be repeated, such as elections. So the question is then, "Why couldn't the polls predict a result?" And we know the answer: because the polls weren't precise enough. We already knew that. From a Bayesian perspective, lack of knowledge is the same thing as nondeterminism in the underlying processes. So, to a Bayesian, you're just wrong; there was a 52/48 chance of the voter base waking up and instead voting for Kamala yesterday. If from some other formulation, which?
      - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
        > From a frequentist perspective This is so confused. The probability models are designed to describe situations where cause and effect is not known.causes still exist whether you can repeat them in an experiment, You are confusing logical models with real world decisions and actions.

pfortuny 2y ago

Single-event statistics projections are pretty useless. Much more so when the “projections” are 50/50.

amusingimpala75 2y ago

Historically (last two elections) the polls have been about 2% further left than the actual result. Thus a 50/50 could/should b be interpreted in Trump’s favor

inthebin 2y ago

Because a percentage of people who vote trump tell everyone they will vote dem to not be bullied or frozen out by their friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. Dr Phil described it well I think.

eschaton 2y ago
Almost like they know it’s wrong.
- l0t0b0r0s 2y ago
  Whats wrong is abandoning family and friends over political bullshit
  - eschaton 2y ago
    That’s true about things like tax policy. That’s not true when it comes to things like bigotry.

trickstra 2y ago

I have yet to see any polls predict any result in any election.

Etheryte 2y ago

Bookies are a way better indicator than polls, I've opted to stop checking polls and only follow the bookies. Nearly all of them gave Trump at least a few percentage points of an edge, at a minimum. Now I'm not saying they're infallible, but they make or break their business by figuring these odds out, so there's a lot of skin in the game for them to be on point.

athrowaway3z 2y ago

I've yet to see anyone else mention it but my theory: Messaging is build on focus groups, and tweaked to get the best results by both sides. That group is the same group that does polls. Its a Goodhart's law in action: Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

Davidzheng 2y ago

The polling system even without herding is broken because no one wants to respond to random texts

diognesofsinope 2y ago

Vegas and prediction markets consistently had Trump as the favorites. Polling companies are in the business of media deals and government contracts. They will develop methodology and reporting to that end and the money is in "a close and contested race", even if it won't be.

dredmorbius 2y ago
Flipside: prediction markets absolutely missed Harris's pick of Walz. I'd looked those up at the time. Of course, if we want to assess which methodology is more accurate, we'll need more than two cherry-picked examples. Methodologically, prediction markets are nonrandom sampling from a pool of self-selected rich people (those with sufficient discretionary income to place bets), tempered by several influences, among which profit motive is only one. See the case of assassination markets for potential confounding factors: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market> And from what I'm familiar with in other forms of gaming, gamblers often lose, and often bigly. There is some research on the question: David M. Rothschild, "Forecasting Elections: Comparing Prediction Markets, Polls, and Their Biases", January 2009, Public Opinion Quarterly 73(5). DOI:10.1093/poq/nfp082 <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228306045_Forecasting_Elections_Comparing_Prediction_Markets_Polls_and_Their_Biases https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228306045_Forecasti...> Joyce E. Berg, Forrest D. Nelson, Thomas A. Rietz, "Prediction market accuracy in the long run" International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 24, Issue 2, April–June 2008, Pages 285-300 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2008.03.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2008.03.007> "A model incorporating markets that allow betting on elections suggests a role in prognostications" (31 October 2024) <https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/prediction-markets-polls-economic-indicators-better-election-forecasting/ https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/prediction-markets-polls-ec...> Referencing Mikhail Chernov, Vadim Elenev, and Dongho Song, "The Comovement of Voter Preferences: Insights from U.S. Presidential Election Prediction Markets Beyond Polls" (28 October 2024) <https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/voter_preferences_updated.pdf https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/...> (PDF).
- rightbyte 2y ago

bitsandboots 2y ago

The conversation has become so polarized that people are preferring to hide their intentions to avoid confrontation.

dogleash 2y ago

> Is there some analysis why the polls didn't correctly predict the result? The people in a swing state choosing to spend time responding to polls are insufficiently representative. They're drowning in advertisements, calls, texts, unexpected people at their door and randos on the street. Why would they give time to a pollster?

sanderjd 2y ago

Seems like they pretty much did? The polls said "a close race in each of the swing states, which either candidate could win". And that's that happened, no?

sanderjd 2y ago

Seems like they pretty much did? The polls said "a close race in each of the swing states, which either candidate could win". And I that's what happened, no?

vagab0nd 2y ago

Why do you think the polls would correctly predict the result? Use Polymarket instead, where money is on the line.

seanw444 2y ago
I kept hearing people laugh at Polymarket. "It's not a real poll!" But it guessed correctly when almost none of the polls did. I think I'll continue to listen to betting markets.
odo1242 2y ago
Thing is, prediction markets tend to be gamed by people who bet large amounts of money. I used a (play money) prediction market platform before and there was literally a "markets that get easily gamed by whales" section on the website.
- cjbillington 2y ago
  If you're talking about "whalebait" markets on manifold, that's a bit disingenuous - these are markets where the thing you're betting about is related to trading behaviour itself, i.e. self-referential markets. I don't disagree that the one french dude betting 30M on Trump on polymarket showed that there isn't enough liquidity in such markets for such distortions to be corrected, but whalebait on Manifold is not really related.
vharuck 2y ago
For most things, I'd be happy to accept a market's wisdom. But after seeing the meme stock phenomenon, I didn't trust them to fairly judge anything related to Trump.

IAmGraydon 2y ago

Historically, the polls tend to skew about 3% left on average. So if the left is showing a 3% lead, it's more likely that reality is they're even. Have a look at this site - they were tied nationally with Trump having a healthy lead in most swing states: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/202... It was no surprise he won, IMO.

torginus 2y ago

All the polls I've been reading (including ones like betting sites, who lose money by being biased), were predicting this exact outcome.

Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago

They did. The pollsters that were close in 2020 were close in 2024 as well. (Rasmussen, AtlasIntel) My explanation for this is that most polls were fabricated, showing enthusiasm for (D) which wasn't there. Basically, a form of propaganda. The most striking example here is Selzer, with that Harris+3 Iowa poll the day before the election.

seanw444 2y ago
Just like 2016.

eigenvalue 2y ago

Yes, here is a very good breakdown of how polls were systematically wrong by the French guy who just made over $40mm of profit betting on Trump in the prediction markets: https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1853818243003125934 https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1853818243003125934 He put Trump's true probability of winning at 90% and a win of the popular vote at 75%.

_dark_matter_ 2y ago
His first point - weighting by 2020 vote - is something that Nate Cohn pointed out very concretely as a methodological choice that wouldn't be obvious until the election [0]. Even in retrospect that seems fair, at least based on the analysis that Nate put together. Worth pointing out though that most pollsters _have_ been weighting by 2020 vote, so in general this isn't a fair critique of the entire polling industry. There are other fair critiques though, for example, that there are entire populations of people that are almost impossible to reach now (e.g. those who don't answer unknown numbers, young people, etc.). [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-el...
odo1242 2y ago
I feel like this is confirmation bias, especially since it's a very large number of polls from reputable organizations being compared against one person's opinion. Even if the true probability isn't 50% I doubt it's that far off.

culi 2y ago

The polls did pretty well this election. They underestimated Trump, but by less than previously. Polls pretty overwhelmingly showed a 50/50 race in every swing state but those odds were always correlated since they're not independent events People are looking at the popular vote and freaking out but lets not forget that there's still 7 million left to count in California and it's expected to net Harris almost 3 million votes

Molitor5901 2y ago

This is purely devil's advocate: Many polls may just be political levers, designed and executed with a predetermined outcome so it can be used in mass media. There is an undeniable tilt to mainstream news companies and almost confirmation bias in their polling.. Does make me wonder.

booleandilemma 2y ago

The president of US called half of American citizens garbage, that definitely had something to do with it. Hillary pulled the same shit, calling half the country "deplorables". Keep insulting American citizens and see what happens.

eschaton 2y ago
They prove you right?
- booleandilemma 2y ago
  This attitude, your attitude, is the problem with our country today.
  - eschaton 2y ago
    Yeah, it’s not the bigots and ignoramuses and accelerationists who vote for fascists that are the problem, it’s “this attitude” of not treating bigots and ignoramuses with kid gloves that’s the problem.
altpaddle 2y ago
Give me a fucking break. Trump trashes segments of America for years and gets a pass but if a democrat makes a single pissed off comment it's a big deal.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

People who are saying "the polls were wrong" didn't look at them carefully enough. This is a retweet of Nate Silver's analysis showing that the most probable outcome, with nearly a 25% chance, was Trump sweeping the swing states. Yes, added up with all the other possible outcomes, the race was very close, but this was still the most likely outcome, and by a large margin: https://x.com/LPDonovan/status/1854265746601488727 https://x.com/LPDonovan/status/1854265746601488727