Posted on 11/02/2016 5:10:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
We are told that election polls these days are highly scientific. Therefore, to suggest that they could be off by more than the statistical margin of error is just wishful thinking.
Most of the polls have said all along that Hillary Clinton will win the presidential election with ease. However, the recent announcement by FBI Director James Comey that the investigation into Clinton’s email is being reopened raises the possibility that support for Clinton could erode. It will be interesting to see if polls conducted after Comey’s announcement show Trump pulling ahead or merely predict that Clinton will win by a narrower margin.
Here are six key reasons why you shouldn’t trust the polls, particularly at this critical moment in history:
The polling industry today is in crisis -- Though polls accurately predicted several recent U.S. elections, the industry has serious problems. As Nate Silver (who engages in the dubious practice of handicapping elections as well as sporting events) admits:
“The polls have managed to produce high-quality output (pretty good forecasts of election outcomes) with worse and worse input (fewer and fewer people responding to them). It’s something of a paradox.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I don’t trust anything the media—print, electronic, or otherwise—says.
When a guy with a rain making machine predicts rain you better take yer umbrella...
I need only one reason: Because I know that the Democrats INTEND to win by any means necessary, and I didn’t have to be told by any “journalist”.
Polls are based on scientific modeling... the same scientific modeling that predicts Climate Change and predicts how often a computer system will encounter a bug, get hacked, or go down.
All we have to do is find the perfect Skynet computer and then we won’t need polls...or elections as the scientific model in the Skynet computer will know all the answers.
Relax, sit back, enjoy the ride. ;)
They are not highly scientific. They pretend to predict outcome, based on faulty premises. The parties live and die by the polls - this makes the polls more important than they really are.
They live and die by their paid internal polls that the public never sees.
The public polls exist to manipulate the electorate until election day approaches, then they star to converge to reality. This allows the pollsters to maintain credibility so they can be hired again for the next election.
As we've seen here and on many boards, the polls are over-weighted by democrats who like to mouth off their opinions, where republicans just go about their lives working and dealing with their families and other obligations. No big surprise.
Polls are not scientific. They are surveys dressed up with some statistical analysis BUT it’s not simply taking averages and calculating standard deviations. No, first they “weigh” the data (which in engineering schools we would call “fudging”) based on some secret sauce. Then they do the math. The weighing at best is an educated guess and at worst is as far from science as fortune telling. The weighing determines the outcome as much or more than the actual survey answers.
The media are dihonest and will lie but in the recent presidential race past they had nothing to lie about via polls. Today they do. People bought hope and change. There was a wave that the media simply reported. Not this time...in 2016.
To be fair, polls that show an outcome we like we tend to put in our “talking points”, polls that show an outcome we don’t like, we criticize...notwithstanding hidden (and not so hidden) agendas, ridiculous sampling and other methods used by pollsters to skew polls, it is what it is. A snapshot in time of the people surveyed at that time, with the sampling as set at that time.
Plenty of good reasons to doubt any method of trying to determine human thoughts. The fundamental flaw in understanding polls, however, is ignorance of the basic mechanics.
If you took the human element out and sampled, say, a dump truck bed full of red and blue gumballs, the limitations would clearly show.
I haven’t checked the numbers, but my guess is that presidential elections rarely finish worse than 55/45 in the popular vote. Well, with a MOE of 3.5, the MOE covers 70% of that range. Thus, when you see anyone say, “Well, that poll hit it right on the nose last time,” it betrays a total ignorance of what MOE means. They’re just mouthing a buzzword to impress you. ‘Hitting it on the nose’ is pure happenstance.
Conclusion: polls can give hints of trends, but are incapable of getting anything exact. Even with gumballs.
Bonus: no point within a given MOE is more likely than any other point in the range to be the actual result. A reported result of 43% +/-3 means 40 or 46% (or any point in between) are just as likely to be the correct answer.
If it wasn’t for vanities, threads straining at gnats over poll results would be the biggest waste of time on FR. There is no such thing as “he moved up 1 point today.”
There’s no doubt (imo) that some Trump supporters are extremely hesitant to reveal that they support him especially to a stranger on a phone. Considering what has happened to a few Trump supporters around the country, who can blame them if they lie about supporting him just to play it safe.
They should do what I do. Don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize.
Wait one cotton pickin minute here! Weren’t we told a few weeks ago the race was over? The mediapukes especially the Washington comPOST and the rest of the toilet paper organizations were screaming at the top of their lungs that Donald Trump shoot concede the election before the vote had even taken place because Hillary was so way ahead in polls! ! They were relentlessly vicious day in and day out 24/7!bloody hell!!... So to that I say Karma baby karma! Now let’s get’er done and WIN!! drive a stake through the queen rat’s heart while she wounded!!!!! To God be the glory!!!
Now, let's put some reality into your stirring of the drum. Some regions of the drum will have more blue than it has red marbles or vise versa. Cities, states, zip codes, land lines, area codes, time of day, internet providers, caller ID, etc., and more, can all alter the mix within the drum. It is very easy to either intentionally or inadvertently focus your sample on one or the other of these "hot spots". You can even do this without the people actually taking the samples knowing. You can do it without even knowing it yourself. Some pollsters might do this intentionally.
Oh spin, please be right. I am so nervous.
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