Are Hillary Clinton’s Strong Poll Numbers Misleading?

The Nation ^ | 8/8/2016 | Jon Wiener

[HomerBohn]

Political science tells us Hillary Clinton will win the election—the poll numbers are so clearly in her favor. As of this moment, the authoritative FiveThirtyEight “polls only” forecast says Clinton’s chance of beating Trump is 86.6 percent. But polling is an inexact science, and a lot of pundits are asking: Could the polls be wrong this time?

The first problem they point to is that some Trump voters might be lying to the pollsters. “How Many People Support Trump but Don’t Want to Admit It?” Thomas Edsall asked in a recent op-ed. Some voters don’t want to tell a live interviewer that they back a candidate who has been so offensive and outrageous. The pollsters call this “social desirability bias”—“the desire of respondents to avoid embarrassment” in speaking with interviewers on the phone. But on November 8, in the privacy of the voting booth, they will cast their secret ballot for the Republican.

It’s happened before—in California, where I live, we call it “the Bradley Effect.” Tom Bradley, the first black mayor of LA, ran for governor in 1982, and all the polls said he would win—but on election day he lost. White voters broke with Bradley in far higher numbers than polling predicted, and many at the time wondered if it was because he was black. This year we wonder how many men will refuse to vote for Hillary because she’s a woman. They know they’re not supposed to say it, but that won’t stop them from doing it.

The second problem is that the pollsters’ standard criteria for “likely voters” may not work this year. If you are in the polling business, it’s not hard to call people and ask whom they plan to vote for. The hard part is deciding whether to count them as “likely voters”—because more than 40 percent of Americans eligible to vote have not cast a ballot in the last two presidential elections. So all pollsters rank the people they poll on the likelihood of their voting.

On this count the 2012 election was a nightmare for the venerable Gallup poll: They predicted Romney would beat Obama. In their mea culpa afterward they said their number one error was “misidentification of likely voters.” A Pew Research study this year declared that “incorrect forecasts about who will vote . . . may be the most serious” problem facing pollsters. Gallup in 2012 missed Obama supporters because they were ranked “not likely” to vote; pollsters worry the same thing might happen this year with Trump supporters.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight has complained about the traditional “likely voter” methodology. It’s pretty straightforward: They ask if the voter is registered, if he intends to vote, if he knows where his polling place is—and whether he’s voted in the past. The most important criterion for a “likely” voter is whether they voted in the last election. If they didn’t, they are typically judged “not likely” to vote, and they are not counted in the poll results. That’s the science of opinion polling, based on historical experience.

But the scientists are not unanimous about this methodology. “A voter can tell you he’s registered,” Nate Silver wrote in 2008, “tell you that he’s certain to vote, tell you that he’s very engaged by the election, tell you that he knows where his polling place is, etc., and still be excluded” from the results if he didn’t vote in the past. Silver thought that if a voter said he intended to vote, he should be counted in the poll results.

So pundits like Silver are worrying that pollsters are using the wrong definition of “likely voter” this time. In fact, that’s what Trump is counting on. His campaign is betting on people who have not voted recently—especially white working-class men alienated by the whole system, who wouldn’t vote for Obama because he is black, but wouldn’t vote for Romney because of his corporate-CEO status. They may get themselves to their polling place this year, for the first time in a long time, to cast a vote for Trump.

Pollsters do measure “intensity” of political preferences. Gallup, for example, asks whether support for a candidate is felt “strongly” or not. The assumption of course is that those who hold their views “strongly” are more likely to show up on election day than those who say they are simply expressing a preference. In 2012, 60 percent of Obama backers supported him “strongly” (the comparable figure for Romney supporters was 38 percent).

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this election has seen voter “intensity” reach new heights. However, a July poll found the level of “strong” support was about equal for both Clinton and Trump—and strikingly low: Pew found in that poll that “fewer than half of both candidates’ supporters said they backed their candidate strongly,” with 45 percent each. The equal proportions suggest intensity is not going to skew the poll results this year.

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The final problem is one everyone knows: the uniqueness of Trump himself. All of political science is based on history, on the idea that patterns in the past will continue in the future. It makes sense: People who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 are unlikely to vote for Trump this year. But Trump is so different from every other candidate in the recent past that pundits fear he could break out of the historic patterns of voting.

That’s pretty much what happened in the primaries, when so many experts said with great conviction that Trump couldn’t win. Their reasoning was strong: He had no ground game, no field operation working to get his supporters to the polls on election day; he had no TV ads, which candidates all consider essential; he wasn’t raising money, or spending it. He had no real campaign organization and no experience in politics. In the past, candidates like that never won. But, of course, the Republican primaries were different this time.

But here’s the thing: The problem with the predictions about the Republican primaries wasn’t actually the polls. The polls’ predictions were largely borne out by the results. In fact, the problem was that the pundits were ignoring the polls. “Trump led in the vast majority of polls,” Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight wrote at the end of the primaries. FiveThirtyEight had 549 polls in their national primary polling database during the primaries; Trump led in 500—in 91 percent. Most if not all of those polls used conventional definitions of “likely voters,” and any “social desirability bias” didn’t end up making the pollsters wrong about the extent of Trump’s support.

So for all the hand-wringing over the polls, maybe the best way to predict the results in November is not to discount the polls. Instead, maybe we should rely less on the pundits who say the polls could be wrong, and more on the polls themselves, which have been pretty accurate about Trump’s support so far this election season. Of course things could change in the next 90 days, but the polls right now are clear: Our next president is Hillary Clinton. •

[Redwood71]

Yep. The polls in their construction are misleading, the media interpretation is misleading, and their use by the politicians and talking heads is misleading. Only thing left is the voters and they voted for Trump. And in many cases, for some politicians, on both sides of the fence, that is misleading as they are too crooked or just plain stupid to get it.

red

[goldstategop]

The polls are dead on accurate, even allowing for bias.

Freepers want to ignore the fact Hillary is likely to win because more people prefer her as President.

If Trump doesn’t turn his decline around, we shouldn’t be surprised at what happens on November 8.

We like to think our guy has a chance but you can’t explain away bad news by saying pollsters methodology is flawed or some other comforting excuse.

Right now, Trump won’t win. Its a fact and there’s no arguing with it.

[DoughtyOne]

At this point, Hillary can't seem to pull more than 50 people together at one time.

Trump can't seem to draw under 5,000 people.


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...this is a general all-purpose message, and should not be seen as targeting any individual I am responding to...

[Robert A Cook PE]

That’s the “other half” of the constant 24-hour-7 day a week barrage of Hillary press from her ABCNNBCBS national press corpse: To drive DOWN any POTENTIAL trump voters to depression and misery, and to DRIVE UP any potential Hillary voters that THEY keep up their faith and their money.

[goldstategop]

We’ll see in October if there is a turnaround.

But you can’t really argue with USC/Dornslife unless you want say Trump has hidden support. That may or may not be true.

With all the problems Hillary has, she should be far worse off but the race is still hers to lose.

[goldstategop]

Trump will never win CA.

He’s not going to campaign there and a candidate has limited time and resources.

Sure, some people are not going to vote at all this year.

[TexasFreeper2009]

Look at this graph of the entire race from real clear politics:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

You can clearly see that for the entire race Hillary has been stuck at 41 and Trump at 38, except right around the conventions where the numbers moved a bit in each’s direction until reverting right back to where they were before.

Yes, anyone can pick apart an individual poll.

But the BIG picture shows Clinton with a consistent 3 point lead or so.

So if Clinton is leading Trump consistently by 3 or so, why am I so confident Trump will win?

Because 41+38= 79

There is a missing 21 !!!!

Does ANYONE really believe that the two 3rd party candidates are going to get a combined 21% ? 15% ? 10%? heck! they'd be lucky to get 5% on a good day COMBINED.

So... lets just for the sake of argument give the two 3rd party candidates 5% combined.

That leaves a missing 16%.

Does anyone believe that there is ANYONE in the world that is “undecided” about Hillary Clinton? Because I sure as heck don't !

Which means that 16% are either:

1. undecided about TRUMP
2. are for Trump but wont admit it to a pollster (or anyone else for that matter)

I believe the Trump is a mixture of both 1 and 2.

And like you I believe that those who are currently undecided about Trump will ultimately decide after the debates in October.

After the debates one of three things will happen:

Hillary's numbers will move up into the high 40’s consistently - this will indicate a close race and probable Hillary win.

Hillary's numbers will move up into the low 50’s consistently - this will indicate a blowout for Hillary.

or Trumps numbers will move up into the mid to high 40’s - this will indicate a Trump blowout. Because Trump will NEVER poll above 50% consistently because of the fear of those being polled of being judged negatively which I believe is skewing the polls 3-5 points.

[goldstategop]

Every one of those scenarios is valid.

We live in a liberal culture and that favors Hillary as reflected in the polls.

Maybe some major event or a strong Trump showing in the debates will move the numbers his way.

Right now everything tells us Hillary is our next Prez.

Sure you don’t like the polls and none of us do but that is where things stand at the moment.

[drypowder]

in order for vote fraud to go unchallenged the polls have to show the plausible outcome of an election. Both are rigged.

[goldstategop]

I’ve said on here, if its close Hillary can and will win.

Vote fraud is part of it but her base will turn out if she can put it away.

We made the mistake of thinking in 2012 Mitt had more support than he really did.

We can’t claim Trump has support that doesn’t exist.

[TexasFreeper2009]

I have been following elections for 30+ years and I know that when an incumbent is polling less than 50% they are in big trouble.

And for all intents and purposes Hillary is the incumbent.

There is a reason this. The incumbent is a KNOWN quantity. People have already made up their minds about them.

Ignore the fact that this is Hillary vs Trump, and pretend instead this is an incumbent who is polling in the low 40’s running against a relative unknown who is polling in the high 30’s with no credible 3rd party candidate 2 months out from election day with all the debates still to come.

History shows that an incumbent in such a position usually loses. Because people have already made up their mind about them.

[TexasFreeper2009]

I never thought Mitt OR McCain had ANY support.

I personally voted for both, but felt like throwing up afterwards.

[Phlap]

We can only hope. The DBM are doing their best to get her elected.

[Phlap]

... we wonder how many men will refuse to vote for Hillary because she’s a woman. ...

She is a woman but she is no lady.

[sheana]

And that is it. She has 240 electoral votes locked up. She can easily win. Polls schmolls. They don’t mean much.

[webstersII]

The polls already have turned around since the Democrat convention (with exception of Reuters, which changed their methodology to favor Hillary). Trump is even leading in the L. A. Times poll.

[HotHunt]

"...Right now, Trump won't win. It's a fact and there's no arguing it...."

And where exactly can we find these "facts" you speak of? From the media who is trashing Trump non-stop and propping up that lying health-risk, hilLIARy? Or from some other "objective" source that only you know the whereabouts of?

To say that "there is no arguing it," you're implying that the "debate" is over, much like Al Gore does when he wants to avoid discussing whether climate change is real or not.

You may well be correct in your analysis but none of us, including you, will know that for sure until the votes are counted in November or December or however long it takes to arrive at a winner. But I say you are just succumbing to the rants and raves of the Leftist media telling us that the race is already won and we should just lie down and accept it.

I say BS to them and to you.

[combat_boots]

Demoralization is key to the election. Key.

[HotHunt]

Geez, this is The Nation.

Katrina I-Hate-America-And-Love-Communism vanden Heuvel's empire. Besides being the editor of this communist rag, she is also a frequent commentator on ABC, as well as on MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe. All known Leftist supporters and promoters.

I should have known better....

[AngelesCrestHighway]

Are Hillary Clinton’s Strong Poll Numbers Misleading?...
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