Posted on 08/13/2020 4:21:55 PM PDT by SpeedyInTexas
Nearly seven months after the presidential election, pollsters are still trying to answer a question that has rattled trust in their profession: Why did pre-election polls show Hillary Clinton leading Donald J. Trump in the battleground states that decided the presidency? Is political polling fundamentally broken? Or were the errors understandable and correctable?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Key points:
"At least three key types of error have emerged as likely contributors to the pro-Clinton bias in pre-election surveys. Undecided voters broke for Mr. Trump in the final days of the race, or in the voting booth. Turnout among Mr. Trump’s supporters was somewhat higher than expected. And state polls, in particular, understated Mr. Trump’s support in the decisive Rust Belt region, in part because those surveys did not adjust for the educational composition of the electorate — a key to the 2016 race."
"They found that undecided and minor-party voters broke for Mr. Trump by a considerable margin — far more than usual."
"Likely-voter screens may have tilted polls in Clinton’s direction"
"Education was a huge driver of presidential vote preference in the 2016 election, but many pollsters did not adjust their samples — a process known as weighting — to make sure they had the right number of well-educated or less educated respondents."
"It’s no small matter, since well-educated voters are much likelier to take surveys than less educated ones. About 45 percent of respondents in a typical national poll of adults will have a bachelor’s degree or higher, even though the census says that only 28 percent of adults (those 18 and over) have a degree."
"The education issue doesn’t just explain why polls were tilted toward Mrs. Clinton — it also helps explain why the state polls fared so much worse than national polls. Most national polls were weighted by education, even as most state polls were not."
"It would suggest that declining response rates have finally taken a toll on the accuracy of political polling, and that would be hard to fix."
"In Upshot/Siena surveys, registered Democrats were indeed likelier than registered Republicans to respond."
"Mr. Trump’s supporters might well have been less likely to respond to telephone surveys."
ARTICLE CONCLUSION: "Many of the challenges that pollsters faced in 2016 aren’t going away. Next time, the challenges could easily be greater."
I can point you to one moment that probably sealed the election.
When Obama made the “magic wand” comment about manufacturing.
Hillary lost the Rust Belt because Trump took a good about of labor voters from the Dems.
And the median age of those polled was 27.
Did the author even mention that in 2016 the EXIT POLLS were wrong? Voters were lying to pollsters even AFTER they had voted.
It's human nature to want to be associated with the winning team. Hence the spectacle that is Alabama football, they win and they continue to pick up fanatical fans that have no association with Alabama other than they just want to be part of a winning team.
The left leaning polling organizations (essentially all of them) realized long ago that they could influence election outcomes by slanting polls towards democratic candidates. My rough guess is that they typically skew anywhere between 2-5% in favor of democrats vs. the actual outcome. Because most people subconsciously want to be associated with a "winner" it pushes undecideds into voting for the candidate the media tells us is winning, "jumping on the bandwagon" as they say.
I don't think for a minute that polls being consistently skewed towards democrats is a coincidence.
Hillary’s super predators comment killed her and Joe has the same problem.
These “analysts” could not analyze their way out of a paper bag.
Black turnout was substantially below the black turnout for Obama in Philadelphia, Detroit, Flint, Milwaukee.
Polling _never_ can accurately predict turnout—no chance.
“Did the author even mention that in 2016 the EXIT POLLS were wrong?”
Oh you are right. I forgot about the exit polls being wrong.
Just did a search. Exit polls were wrong for: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
It will be all about turnout. Get the Republican voter turnout going! It could be far better than it was in the 2016 election.
Last time, Hillary arrogantly called Trump supporters “Deplorables and Irredeemables”....
This time, it’s the Black Lives Matter arrogance or putting some lives over other lives...and the lies about BLM, rioters, looters, Law and order!
Trump focuses on Law and Order and taking care of Americans, keeping them safe is a proven Winner!
As I remember it: Hillary got about the same number of votes from whites that Obama did. The black vote did not turn out for her like they did for Obama.
One could surmise that Hillary lost because of the black vote or lack thereof.
I know of a number of Obama voters (democrats) who voted for Trump. They could not stand Hillary, also because of the MSM attacks they saw Trump as an underdog. They wanted to support the underdog.
The polls are just as biased and flawed now as they were in 2016. Just like in 2016, the Marxist Media treat them as the Gospel Truth. Also like in 2016, Trump will win despite them and The Left will again be left in tears.
They were wrong because that was intended.
It will be, Speedy. I live in one of the bluest states—Vermont—and I see far more Trump than Biden signs as I drive around. I saw almost no Trump signs in 2016. Vermont gave Trump 31% of the vote in ‘16. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that he will get more than 31% this year and his total number of votes received will be greater than the 95,000 he got in ‘16.
That said, he’s still going to lose badly in Vermont. I expect he might get around 35% of the vote. To me, that is a good omen for how the rest of the country will vote. Trump will take several states he nearly carried in 2016, for instance Minnesota, Colorado, Virginia, New Hampshire.
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