Posted on 10/18/2020 2:10:36 PM PDT by 11th_VA
This is my follow-up article about the presidential election polls and predictions about the election results. You can read the first article here.
The best tool we have to determine the outcome of elections is polls. Each poll has its own bias and we can get rid of some of the bias in individual polls by combining the results of each individual poll in one giant poll. Fivethirtyeight is a website that does this for us. Its method isn't fool proof though. We can get rid of some of the bias, but not all of it.
Right before the 2016 presidential election, on November 7th, Fivethirtyeight estimated that Hillary Clinton had a 67% chance of winning the election. Yet, Donald Trump crushed Hillary. There are several reasons why this happened. I am not going to waste your time to discuss these. The most important factor was that voters didn't reveal their true intentions when asked by pollsters. As a result, polls failed to predict the outcome of the 2016 elections. Take a look at this screenshot of Fivethirtyeight's website from November 7, 2016 (the day before the 2016 election): ...
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
They need to stop announcing this, it will make the schadenfreude even funnier with a higher stun factor
You mean a real LANDSLIDE for Trump?
Polls are big business that depend on their reputation to keep and attract clients. So I find it hard to accept that, given their disastrous performance in ‘16 they haven’t gone to great lengths in redesigning their algoritms and practices to prevent another such disaster. So give the current polls more credence than most here.
If 15% of Trumpets refuse to disclose their support ... very impossible to poll them
This is about the fourth article in 2 days from the MSM saying Trump is doing better than polls are predicting. Is it just motivation for Biden voters to get out there and vote? Is it telling Trump voters to stay home Trump has this? Never trust the MSM.
The pollsters get the results that their clients want.
Only 2% of people polled respond today - it used to be 50%. So if the nutty Trump hating Librarian in some rural 50,000 person town is the only one to
respond, her response gets amplified beyond reason.
Definitely agree here. They presumably have corrected for how wrong they were. That being said - they are probably fighting the last war. I bet there are new biases this year that they are not accounting for.
I think accurate polling is more difficult now than ever because people can and do avoid answering the phone or responding to questions however they are delivered. But polling companies, whether they lean left or right, have no incentive to “square” with the customers and tell them that polling now is harder than ever.
But here’s the way that polls “get better” closer to Election Day — they cheat by looking at early voting activity to “true up” their polling. By the time they’ve conducting their final poll in many states, more than 50 percent have voted. And many states identify the number of Democrats and Republicans who have cast ballots. There is no way polling companies don’t use this data to massage their results.
Who is pretending to be Yahoo.news and posting pro Trump articles on their site?
Bkmk
...... It’s not wise to predict what will happen in this Election based on the previous Election ... The Democrats and Anti Trump factions were unprepared and caught with their pants down last time ..... They have taken notes and have made adjustments to their tactics and are well prepared for the election events this time ....
Incumbent Presidents are notoriously hard to defeat. Even unpopular and/or incompetent ones (George W. Bush and Barack Obama are good recent examples) usually manage to hold on. So I find it hard to believe that Trump’s winning would be a “stunning” anything. However, a doddering old bumbler who rarely leaves his basement and draws massive crowds in the dozens when he does? That would be a stunning upset.
The polls are meant to cover for a fraudulent Biden victory or undermine the legitimacy of a Trump victory. That’s their sole purpose.
Isn’t it amazing that election after election the polls always favor the Democrats? How is this even possible if the polls are supposed to be unbiased?
40 percent chance? We’re quibbling. Both sides should think this is a toss-up and work like hell to get out the vote.
I agree: Iowa and Ohio are not battlegrounds. Neither are Virginia or Colorado.
I disagree: Maine, Nevada and New Hampshire are in play, and potentially so is New Mexico.
Plus, we’re still 16 days out. The polls could still move. There’s another debate coming up. The Hunter Biden story can develop legs. And Trump’s on a rampage.
I have been actively campaigning for a candidate for an obscure regional office for a semi non-partisan position (State board of education.) I have phone numbers of likely solid supporters, and I have been trying to contact them to get name recognition and generate support for my candidate. They do not answer their land lines and their cell goes to voice mail - most work. I have talked live to maybe 5%. I do not answer my phones.
If Trump wins Maine, the Democrat party as we know it is dead. It will be 12 years before a large number of GOP Senators are up for re-election in a Presidential year again - the republic will likely be saved for another generation.
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