Posted on 12/14/2015 11:13:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Everyone today is freaking out about a poll from Monmouth University that purports to show Donald Trump getting 41% of the Republican vote. There's a lot to note about exactly how garbage this poll is. It is so bad that Monmouth's own polling director is basically disavowing it. If you are interested in a relatively robust writeup of the methodological problems with the poll itself, which are primarily driven by the insane method Monmouth used to select their sample, you can check this Politico writeup here.
That having been said, we pretend that any of the other polls are more accurate at our own peril. During the course of this race it is has been a regular phenomenon that polls taken within 2-3 days of each other, purporting to evaluate the exact same voting sample, measure Trump's level of support in particular wildly outside the margin of error of each other. As an example, this NBC/WSJ poll taken almost the same exact days shows Trump's support at 27 nationally. In the last two weeks, five other national polls have been conducted, many with overlapping days, showing Trump's support ranging from 24-36%.
Nor is this a recent phenomenon. In late November, ABC/WaPo and Bloomberg conducted polls on the same days - one showed Trump at 32%, the other at 24%.
Likewise, many have completely forgotten the debacles of 2012 (which oversampled Republicans) and 2014 (which drastically oversampled Democrats). Many races that were polled very extensively turned out to be flat out wrong. Sen. Mitch McConnell's contest against Alison Grimes in Kentucky was one of the most thorougly polled races in the country, and McConnell was supposed to be involved in a nailbiter, but he ended up winning by about 20 points. Likewise, Jim Gilmore was supposed to lose in Virginia by about 20 points, but he almost won.
The simple reality is that the electorate is rapidly fluctuating from one contest to the next. There's a reason that Gallup, one of the oldest and most respected pollsters in the country, has decided to stop polling the Presidential race altogether - too much chance for embarrassment due to the results turning out drastically different from what you predicted.
Probably, we can discern a few things from the aggregate polling information that we have. 1) Donald Trump probably has a national lead among people who say they are likely Republican primary voters. How many of those people will actually vote, I have no idea. 2) Sen. Ted Cruz (and Sen. Marco Rubio are probably fighting it out for second, and Cruz has probably opened a small but negligible lead on Rubio in this particular fight. 3) Ben Carson is probably declining pretty rapidly. 4) Everyone else is basically hoping for some sort of sea-shifting event.
Other than that, everyone is basically using the polls as a PR/fundraising tool. And I won't pretend that they aren't fun to discuss and that they can't be useful for analyzing larger trends. But I think the numbers themselves are mostly garbage at this point and should be ignored.
Please check out who the self-proclaimed Very Conservative and Somewhat Conservative people voted for in this poll.
It's on page two in a box with vote breakdown.
This is going to be a rude awakening for those who think only moderate Republicans support Trump.
Trump: 41 - 45
Cruz: 26 - 8
We know only polls that Red State likes are the ones that matter. /s
Monmouth. Aren’t they the ones that gave Cruz the Iowa led?
Red State...
What, you couldn’t find a source more respected like say the WP, the NYT, or the WSJ?
What a shame.
No, that was the DMR.
1. Politico has already shown they can’t be trusted.
2. Polls that show results to decimal places of a percent are implying degrees of accuracy that cannot exist with MOE of five percent.
3. Constant polling of inconsequential states this far out in a primary is the modern equivalent of reading chicken entrails.
I’m pretty sure I have seen threads that you posted with these “garbage polls”.
He’s saying they’re garbage because the situation is constantly changing, and not because of methodologies.
That is an unusual comment.
Give me a list of 5 news outlets you like.
Monmouth had Cruz ahead in Iowa first, DMR followed.
Yep, Trump probably not above 35-36%.
‘Red State...
What, you couldn’t find a source more respected like say the WP, the NYT, or the WSJ?
What a shame.’
“Give me a list of 5 news outlets you like.”
Seriously, CW, how could you stop laughing long enough to type? That was some incredible DO-humor right there! Even if you disagree, you can still chuckle now and then...no?
All of them.
I think the info at the links in the article are worth a click.
“Click!”
“Click!”
I knew you could do it.
I tried yesterday to explain the problems with polls/surveys when it came to an Apple reliability thread. Basically, I was told by our fellow enlightened Freepers that I was engaging in “insane discourse” because my attack on the methodology might have poked holes in their beliefs.
Sooooo...
All the Trumpettes out there are likely to bash you. Everyone else might see some logic to your post.
Bottom line: people believe polls when they support their beliefs. (And there are some skeptics like myself who view most polls as junk data.)
Far too many people put too much stock in the polls. They are the numbers obtained from telephone calls to shallow-thinking individuals whose answers are based on their fleeting impressions, their emotions, their recollection of news broadcasts.
The polls ask a few people, about a thousand, under the deluded impression that the people asked faithfully represent the entire population.
The pollsters want us to believe that their methods eliminate any bias in the results due to their polling methods. Since so many polls produce wildly different results, it looks like we can’t believe that.
Yes. The methodology IS important - usually the results of one question becomes the headline, when the entire poll results need to be studied. They really are very interesting.
Right now I’m suspect of all of them.
You aren’t?
You know, I’ve been somewhat mean in a few posts to you. For that I seriously apologize. I shouldn’t have been.
You do open yourself up to some criticism though, as I’m sure you think I do as well.
Surprisingly, there is one thing I’d like to thank you for at this point.
After backing Giuliani, Perry, and Walker, I’d like to thank you for not backing Trump. Oops, make that two things. Thank you for working your magic for Cruz.
“Please check out who the self-proclaimed Very Conservative and Somewhat Conservative people voted for in this poll.”
I also noticed his strong Tea Party support is overwhelming as well. He seem to be doing well with the base across the spectrum.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.