Posted on 03/24/2013 12:47:31 PM PDT by zigzagzoom
HOWEVER, I didn't support Romney and rejected the 'unskewed' cr*p ~ and as I recall you were over there telling us how 'unskewing' was great stuff ~ actually, it was nonsense. The basic assumption there was that every poll was highly stratified and tightly controlled. Which doesn't really matter unless you want to gauge public opinion on more than one item at a time ~ and you want to minimize the expensive calling operation.
The only way to overcome the problem with organized respondent groups (a minority of the population, or a subset if you want to call them that) is to increase sample sizes to enormous levels (hundreds of thousands of calls) ~ AND THEN PAY FOR IT!
So you're basing you argument on Pew's research - which specifically rejected your entire conclusion. Do you know utterly ridiculous you sound? It seems like you hadn't even read the entirety of the article which you are providing as proof of your discredited theory.
Further, you are STILL avoiding any discussion of the 2012 election which is the most recent example of how accurate polling has become. That, again, blows your theory up. The polling in 2012, especially at the state level, was so accurate that aggregator's of that information were able to predict all 50 states correctly. Conservatives like Morris, Barone, etc, that refused to believe the polling later admitted they were wrong and that the pollsters got it right.
I recall you were over there telling us how 'unskewing' was great stuff
Man, I made fun of that "unskewed polls" crap from minute one. I have no idea where you get the idea I thought it was "great stuff". It was incredibly idiotic, yet I took a lot of heat here for pointing out how ridiculous "unskewed polls" was. Lot of folks wanted to believe there was a big polling conspiracy and that "they" were oversampling Democrats. Turns out the pollsters had it pretty much exactly right. The numbers then become incredibly predictive in the hands of a poll aggregator like Nate Silver.
The only way to overcome the problem with organized respondent groups (a minority of the population, or a subset if you want to call them that) is to increase sample sizes to enormous levels (hundreds of thousands of calls) ~ AND THEN PAY FOR IT!
You keep posting about this theory of yours that has already been proven entirely wrong. Why? We just had an election in 2012. The polls were incredibly accurate - particularly at the state level. Why are you spewing out gibberish to defend a theory that is already completely debunked? You are simply wrong about polling. You said the following:
As I've been explaining since last summer, the use of polling to determine public opinion has collapsed to utter nonsense.
Wrong. You're just flat out wrong. Everything you are posting now is just gobbledygook to try to hide how wrong your claim is. What you said was ridiculous and we just went through an election cycle that proves how silly it was.
Wait a minute here. You realize I think polling is very accurate. Unskewing was stupid and I said so at the time. As far as issue polling of course it depends on how question was asked but I believe that is accurate as well
Yes, I know we agree on this. I just included you since we were making the same basic points on this thread (and arguing with the same person).
Got confused sorry
All of them admit to ADJUSTING their data so the results matched aggregate trendlines. That is AUGURY~ not Statistical Analysis.
You now want us to believe that the Washington Post doesn't misinterpret and misuse polling. Their trick is simple ~ have 20 polls taken at the same kind then release the one that makes Republicans or straight people or non-criminals look the worst.
Your theory didn't even hold up to the last election. The very Pew article you are using as evidence, disputes your own conclusion. In case you skipped over it in my last post, here is Pew blowing your theory to pieces:
A new study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that, despite declining response rates, telephone surveys that include landlines and cell phones and are weighted to match the demographic composition of the population continue to provide accurate data on most political, social and economic measures. This comports with the consistent record of accuracy achieved by major polls when it comes to estimating election outcomes, among other things.
That's Pew discussing the fact that low response rates have NOT prevented polling from being reliable and accurate. Exactly the opposite of what you claim.
Let's go back to your statement which I originally took issue with:
As I've been explaining since last summer, the use of polling to determine public opinion has collapsed to utter nonsense.
You are completely, utterly wrong. The polling for the 2012 election alone shreds your theory that polling can not determine public opinion. Analysts and statisticians that relied on polling, particularly the state level polling, to make their predictions were deadly accurate - in some cases people like Nate Silver got all 50 states right. Analysts like Dick Morris, Michael Barone, etc, who rejected polling results got it wrong - and later had to admit the polls were right. If they can admit it, surely you can see how you might want to reconsider your silly theory.
All of them admit to ADJUSTING their data so the results matched aggregate trendlines.
They use modeling based on things like demographics - and it works very well. That was the heart of the dispute with people who refused to believe the polls last time around. Many conservatives and Republican analysts refused to believe the "D+" numbers the polls were using. In the end, the electorate was D+6 - which was a pretty good average of what most polls were indicating.
You now want us to believe that the Washington Post doesn't misinterpret and misuse polling. Their trick is simple ~ have 20 polls taken at the same kind then release the one that makes Republicans or straight people or non-criminals look the worst.
You're just spewing conspiracy theories and laughable nonsense. You didn't even know the Washington Post commissions an outside pollster. You obviously hadn't read the entire Pew article you were trying to use as evidence to back up your theory, since Pew completely disputes your conclusion. You clearly have no idea how the polling industry works, the science and methodology behind it, etc. You're making a fool of yourself and trying to change the subject.
Professionally done polls with neutral questions that ask about approval ratings, generic ballot preference, etc, are usually pretty accurate - even with small sample sizes. These polls are even more useful when a statistician takes an aggregate of them (which smooths out any outliers on either side). Your statement that the use of polling to determine public opinion has collapsed is more than wrong, it's downright goofy.
You need to learn to read more carefully and with understanding.
You are trying to make methodology sound scary with some convoluted blather. Of course poll models are weighted for demographics. There are not some random "separately conceived ideas", they are based on statistics, past voting patterns, census, etc. There is nothing wrong with that. It's the science behind accurate polling. It's precisely the reason you don't need huge samples to get accurate results. It's why polling has gotten so good and your theory that it doesn't work is silly and wrong.
Stop trying to change the subject. This is your argument:
As I've been explaining since last summer, the use of polling to determine public opinion has collapsed to utter nonsense.
November 2012 happened long after you apparently began making these silly claims. The polling results for the 2012 general election cycle destroy your theory completely. The polls were accurate. Your theory that they aren't was entirely incorrect. You're not going to be able to cover that up with a bunch of psychobabble. You obviously don't really understand polling and just don't want to admit it.
Some polls are 'weighted' for special purposes, and most aren't ever 'weighted' ~
I can see we won't get very far with this discussion.
Who's the "skewing" crowd? Do you mean the "unskewed polls" guy and the fools that believed in that garbage? That idiot, who's name was Dean Chambers by the way, thought he could take existing scientific polling and undo the methodology and apply his own. He claimed, like you, that the models polling firms were using were wrong because of the way they weighted for demographics. You are essentially saying the same thing as this goofball was, and you're both dead wrong. At least he has admitted it and seems to have shut down his site.
I can see we won't get very far with this discussion.
Yes because you are trying to avoid defending your statement, because you know it was wrong.
Again, here is what you said:
I've been explaining since last summer, the use of polling to determine public opinion has collapsed to utter nonsense.
That's what you stated. And you are dead wrong, and the 2012 election polling proves that. Anyone that used the polling leading into the November election, particularly the state polls, knew that Obama was going to win. Those who did an aggregate of that polling often got all 50 states right (such as Nate Silver). Those who believed, like you, that the polls were not able to predict public opinion were completely wrong. You are completely wrong about this. Just admit and move on like Morris, Barone, etc, have.
The 'skewering' crowd believed in 'models' that would enable a pollster to keep sampling until he had the number of responses he wanted ~ and then, presumably, they'd show their customer the responses they received (albeit only those that gave the result they preferred to push).
What do you mean by 'model' ~ ? Please define that for me. That term showed up in the discussion of 'skewing' and didn't make any more sense then that it does now. Statistically valid samples are organized in a number of ways ~ but the whole scheme depends on random sampling.
As you've heard people say, polling is as much an art as it is a science. It's really both things, and they are getting better at it even as reaching people is increasingly challenging. Many of these polling firms have a model for what they believe the area they are polling looks like. This is what they use to weight polling. This is the reason they can poll so few people and still be quite accurate. The information for this model comes from many sources including additional polling over time, previous exit polling, who is a likely voter, census information, etc.
This is just an example. I'm just making these numbers up so it makes sense. So lets say a pollster reaches 200 people in Detroit to find out how folks are voting for the next mayor, but 100 of those 200 respondents were white and 100% of those whites said they were voting Republican. The pollster would know this sample is not representative of the city based on their demographic models. Blacks are about 75% of Detroit, not 50%. And whites in this example are 25% of the population, not 50% So with this information they re-weight the poll to more accurately reflect who is in the city so the result is more accurate. From the raw numbers they would know that blacks were voting 100% Democrat and whites were voting 100% Republican. The raw numbers in this example would lead you to believe it was going to be a 50-50, but the pollster uses their model of the real electorate to re-weight the raw numbers and yields a poll result of 75% of the vote for the Dem candidate, and 25% for the white candidate. Now just think about that on a bigger scale. They can re-weight for all manner of things. The goal is to get a natural sample from the raw caller survey, but they re-weight to the extent they feel they have to in order to produce an accurate poll.
This last election cycle pollsters were finding a significant D+ electorate. I am sure you remember all the stories claiming the electorate was not going to be anything like 2008 which was D+7. People that did not believe the polls were claiming it would be more like D+3 or even R+1. Well, it was D+6 - which was very similar to the D/R turnout in 2008. Conservatives didn't think so many blacks would turn out, or Hispanics would turn out, or young people would turn out, single women would turn out, etc. But they did. They turned out in sufficient numbers to elect Obama by 5 million votes. Now remember D+6 doesn't mean every Democrat voted for their party, and it doesn't include the independent numbers - but it gives you a sense of what the electorate that turned out looked like. The closer a pollster was to D+6 model, the more accurate they were likely to be.
The 'skewering' crowd believed in 'models' that would enable a pollster to keep sampling until he had the number of responses he wanted ~ and then, presumably, they'd show their customer the responses they received (albeit only those that gave the result they preferred to push).
I have no idea what you're talking about. This sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory. When we talk about the "skewing" crowd most folks are referring to the people who believed polls could be "unskewed" (such as Dean Chambers).
Now the "unskewed polls" nonsense and folks who believed in that bit of silliness thought they could take existing polling and re-weight it reflect a different electorate. They rejected polling that showed a D+ turnout model and tried to rework the polls to show an R+ turnout. They were wrong. The bulk of the media polling turned out to be correct. Their "models" of what the electorate looked like were mostly right on target.
The last week I've been called for a dozen polls ~ which isn't so strange ~ I'm their token real Conservative. They'll get my response and toss it out. In the meantime I've got their phone numbers and can trace a commercial call back to its source.
This is BS. Look at the bottom right...registered voters from almost 10 years ago? Someone forgot to fix that with photoshop.
And, let’s see the actual wording of the poll and not just the title.
Was the same question asked over the 10 year period? Did they shift their demographics? etc.
“Pop culture doesn’t rule my world, and the MSM promotion of it doesn’t change reality.
...
If society is to crumble then I intend to be the last man standing, not the first one caving.”
I don’t disagree, but you may find that you wont be the last man standing as there are many more of us compelled by the logical evidence of autonomy, logic, and history to see things as you do.
Eventually most of what survives of our civilization will see it that way too. This is not a question of if but when.
Popular couture has the habit of acting like idiots and driving large numbers of people to do likewise. (remember the plant pets?)
You can’t escape the laws of nature.
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