4 ms·

That is surely a huge bias in cases like this. Eg I see they are under represented in young males so if the Yes campaign gets young male yes voters to sign up i

That is surely a huge bias in cases like this. Eg I see they are under represented in young males so if the Yes campaign gets young male yes voters to sign up it will bias results significantly...

allegory 12y ago
Actually no. The yes campaign gets people to sign up but it doesn't mean they will be surveyed. It's invitation only i.e. you sign up and wait until you are invited based on your personal information. They are gated polls. Also based on experience there are "shill traps" in the surveys as well.
- justincormack 12y ago
  I see they also have a quite complex compensation based on previous voting history, which they have for longer term respondents. It does seem odd though that none of the other polls show a sudden shift in intentions.
  - allegory 12y ago
    Some notes on this (from experience): This is because the non-YouGov polls are quite slow to aggregate data. For example Ipsos Mori is mainly scheduled physical panels and not online (some of it is still paper collection!?!) so any shift in behaviour isn't immediately noticed. It can take a week or so for anything to become apparent. Opinion changes very rapidly when there are political items on the table. Sometimes within hours. YouGov wins here as it can constantly obtain data almost in a stream-like format and adjust rapidly. They had a thing called BrandIndex that did that a few years ago as well with brand opinions based on advertising and press scraping. Usually the last minute swings are because there has been a lot of focus on this subject recently in the press which means people are likely to commit to firmer decisions based on research, actually decide to communicate their decisions or are relatively conservative at making decisions. If you look at how these things are worded, they are always in the form of NO to the status quo and YES to change as well. This means that people less conservative with their opinions will be apparent up front and people more conservative (and usually more intelligent) will lag behind. The nature of the vote depends on which group goes which way. Watch these stats over the next few major political events - it's really interesting!
    - justincormack 12y ago
      Thanks. I might sign up to YouGov to get a better idea. I was on a phone poll for something years ago but of course I moved and they lost continuity. Phone polling accuracy is falling sharply it seems.

That is surely a huge bias in cases like this. Eg I see they are under represented in young males so if the Yes campaign gets young male yes voters to sign up it will bias results significantly...

allegory 12y ago

Actually no. The yes campaign gets people to sign up but it doesn't mean they will be surveyed. It's invitation only i.e. you sign up and wait until you are invited based on your personal information. They are gated polls. Also based on experience there are "shill traps" in the surveys as well.

justincormack 12y ago
I see they also have a quite complex compensation based on previous voting history, which they have for longer term respondents. It does seem odd though that none of the other polls show a sudden shift in intentions.
- allegory 12y ago
  Some notes on this (from experience): This is because the non-YouGov polls are quite slow to aggregate data. For example Ipsos Mori is mainly scheduled physical panels and not online (some of it is still paper collection!?!) so any shift in behaviour isn't immediately noticed. It can take a week or so for anything to become apparent. Opinion changes very rapidly when there are political items on the table. Sometimes within hours. YouGov wins here as it can constantly obtain data almost in a stream-like format and adjust rapidly. They had a thing called BrandIndex that did that a few years ago as well with brand opinions based on advertising and press scraping. Usually the last minute swings are because there has been a lot of focus on this subject recently in the press which means people are likely to commit to firmer decisions based on research, actually decide to communicate their decisions or are relatively conservative at making decisions. If you look at how these things are worded, they are always in the form of NO to the status quo and YES to change as well. This means that people less conservative with their opinions will be apparent up front and people more conservative (and usually more intelligent) will lag behind. The nature of the vote depends on which group goes which way. Watch these stats over the next few major political events - it's really interesting!
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Thanks. I might sign up to YouGov to get a better idea. I was on a phone poll for something years ago but of course I moved and they lost continuity. Phone polling accuracy is falling sharply it seems.