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Were the polls that far off?

calamity said:
Biggest problem with polling was poor turnout. Hillary pulled in 6 million fewer votes than Obama,
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Probably not true. This is how the false assertion that Romney had fewer votes than McCain got started. California and Washington take forever to finish getting their returns in, in addition to many state's absentee ballots. There are probably a few million votes left out there.
 
TaterTots said:
With the way people assume Trump is a racist and his supporters are, I'd be hard pressed to admit I was voting for him too. If you state you voted for him you'd have 12 people calling you a racist because the left wing media has brainwashed them. Not worth the hassle.
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I found that to be pretty much true everywhere I post and even here at DP where the partisanship and ideologies are pretty evenly split. Whenever I started a thread to get opinion of those who would admit they were leaning toward or would vote or had already voted for Trump, the responses were really really sparse. Also the absence of yard signs and bumper stickers supporting Trump were a clear indication--at least as I see it--that people feared retaliation from others if they advertised their preference. Of course there weren't any Hillary yard signs or bumper stickers in our area either while candidate yard signs and bumper stickers were clearly evident all over town in previous elections.
 
Mycroft said:
If the polls had been accurate from the get go, they would have predicted her poor turnout.
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I'm definitely not making excuses. I'm just saying where I think they screwed up.
 
Anagram said:
Probably not true. This is how the false assertion that Romney had fewer votes than McCain got started. California and Washington take forever to finish getting their returns in, in addition to many state's absentee ballots. There are probably a few million votes left out there.
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Not 7 million votes though. Hell, she lost Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 20,000 votes. Poor turnout by Obama voters in Detroit and Milwaukee alone accounts for that.

PA was within what? 50,000 to 60,000 votes?
 
It was claimed that over the past few months that there were Trump voters in hiding all over the country, who for one reason, or another didn't participate in the polling. I'm one of them. I didn't answer calls from D.C, San Diegon or Mohawk, New York (who the hell do I know in Mohawk, New York?). Til now, I thought it was just wishful thinking. That silent contingent blew the polling numbers all to hell, obviously.

What is hilarious, though, is the nukber of anti-Trumpers who swore up-n-down that the pro-Clinton numbers were gospel and pro-Trump numbers were bull****.
 
calamity said:
Not 7 million votes though. Hell, she lost Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 20,000 votes. Poor turnout by Obama voters in Detroit and Milwaukee alone accounts for that.

PA was within what? 50,000 to 60,000 votes?
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There might be 7 million left total. Could be 4ish million more in California. Another 1 or 2 in Washington. Denver still has votes coming in since Colorado switched to a vote by mail system. Clinton won't pass Obama's vote total, but the total number of votes will be about what it was in 2012. With population growth that's only a small drop in turnout.

Most other states still have a good amount of absentee votes coming in too. We'll know what turnout is in about a week.
 
Anagram said:
There might be 7 million left total. Could be 4ish million more in California. Another 1 or 2 in Washington. Denver still has votes coming in since Colorado switched to a vote by mail system. Clinton won't pass Obama's vote total, but the total number of votes will be about what it was in 2012. With population growth that's only a small drop in turnout.

Most other states still have a good amount of absentee votes coming in too. We'll know what turnout is in about a week.
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It's explained here
Voter turnout in 2016 looks low so far ? and that may have helped Donald Trump - Vox

Clinton garnered 129,000 fewer votes in heavily Democratic Detroit than Obama did four years ago — and lost the state by around 61,000 total votes.

She also got 95,000 fewer votes in heavily Democratic Milwaukee than Obama did — and lost the state by 73,000 total votes. This obviously isn’t the only reason Trump won, but it’s an important subplot.
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Hawkeye10 said:
The polls were way wrong....I was completely right to not trust them these last months.

Even the exit polls were way wrong... I made the mistake of trusting them for 1:20 before the election returns straightened me back up.
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Well, please do be prepared how to explain why you were completely right to trust Trump in 6 months, in a year, in four years....
 
Mr Person said:
Well, please do be prepared how to explain why you were completely right to trust Trump in 6 months, in a year, in four years....
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The subject of this thread is the polls, not me, not Trump.
 
Anagram said:
The exit polls are always wrong. Too much self-selection to get an accurate reading. Why do you think the polls were way wrong though? 7/10 National polls had the margin within 3%. All but one were within 4%.
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But when they all, but one, show the margin all going to Hillary, that's a bigger miss than what you're saying. Say you throw a scatter plot diagram up and all of the dots are withing 3% of the actual line but they are fairly evenly split on either side, at that point, you're correct to say that it's not that far off. But if all the dots are erring on one side of the line, with the LA Times being the single outlier, that's missing it a lot. That's an utter failure.
 
Fishking said:
But when they all, but one, show the margin all going to Hillary, that's a bigger miss than what you're saying. Say you throw a scatter plot diagram up and all of the dots are withing 3% of the actual line but they are fairly evenly split on either side, at that point, you're correct to say that it's not that far off. But if all the dots are erring on one side of the line, with the LA Times being the single outlier, that's missing it a lot. That's an utter failure.
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It's not an utter failure though. Most of the polls favored Hillary, but they only favored Hillary by a little bit. By less than the polls favored Romney in 2012. And the polls missed by about the same amount, except without an LA times outliar for Obama. 7 of the final 10 polls had a tie or Romney+1 when Obama won by 4. Here 7 of the final 10 polls had Clinton+3 or Clinton+4 when it looks like she'll win by 1 or 1.5.

If the polls weren't dead then, they aren't dead now. The polls herding around a spot 2-3% or less away from the actual margin is remarkably accurate.
 
Anagram said:
That's actually not true. The LA Times poll may end up being the most inaccurate poll of the cycle depending on where Clinton's final margin ends up. They predicted Trump by three when Clinton actually won the popular vote.
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This is precisely why I will never gauge or BEGIN to predict the outcome of ANY future election based on which candidate is ahead NATIONALLY.

All that matters are the swing state polls.

PERIOD.
 
Mr Person said:
Well, please do be prepared how to explain why you were completely right to trust Trump in 6 months, in a year, in four years....
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I have to admit that he's right about the off-topicness, but your off-topicness is also correct... despite being off-topic.

Trump will be a disaster of epic ****ing proportions.

(Only off-toic post I will make, swaer.
 
Anagram said:
It's not an utter failure though. Most of the polls favored Hillary, but they only favored Hillary by a little bit. By less than the polls favored Romney in 2012. And the polls missed by about the same amount, except without an LA times outliar for Obama. 7 of the final 10 polls had a tie or Romney+1 when Obama won by 4. Here 7 of the final 10 polls had Clinton+3 or Clinton+4 when it looks like she'll win by 1 or 1.5.

If the polls weren't dead then, they aren't dead now. The polls herding around a spot 2-3% or less away from the actual margin is remarkably accurate.
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Again, if they are all erring to one side, that's a failed model. Anyone who does a scientific study, that gets that kind of result, will go back to their models and have to change them, because they are flawed.
 
Fishking said:
Again, if they are all erring to one side, that's a failed model. Anyone who does a scientific study, that gets that kind of result, will go back to their models and have to change them, because they are flawed.
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Of course they're flawed. But they were by no means an utter failure like you said. And there's no reason to believe public polling is dead. Polls usually error mostly to one side or the other. Happened in 2012, 2008, and 2004 as well. This year was actually closer than most.
 
Anagram said:
Of course they're flawed. But they were by no means an utter failure like you said. And there's no reason to believe public polling is dead. Polls usually error mostly to one side or the other. Happened in 2012, 2008, and 2004 as well. This year was actually closer than most.
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Everything, to include the polling showed Hillary winning easily. Trump got over 300 EVs. That's the end result of having all the margins of error on one side. That's an utter failure.
 
Fishking said:
Everything, to include the polling showed Hillary winning easily. Trump got over 300 EVs. That's the end result of having all the margins of error on one side. That's an utter failure.
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The difference between Trump getting 300 EV and Trump losing the election was a 1.2% shift in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Not hitting that right is not an utter failure.

And the fact is they might have gotten it right. They didn't overestimate Clinton's percentage in those states. They underestimated Trump. But they had tons of undecideds. With all the lifelong Democrats voting Republican for the first time in those states, it makes sense they were undecided until the final weekend.
 
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