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Make or break year for polling industry

MovingPictures

MovingPictures

WE'LL DO IT LIVE!
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MovingPictures said:
As of this moment FiveThirtyEight rates Democrats as having an 84.1% chance of retaking the House and gaining 39 seats, and Republicans having a 79.5% chance of keeping the Senate.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/?ex_cid=midterms-header

If this turns out to be another missed forecast, I'd say stick a fork in the polling industry, as nobody will take them seriously again.

Obviously, I hope their predictions are correct.
Click to expand...

Put it another way. If the blue wave is much bigger than predicted b/c polls only count registered and/or likely voters. There isn't a metric that I know of that can count or estimate the number of new voters that come in. It seems like every time Trump spews something that alienates a new group of people they all revolt, register to vote, and donate money to the Democrats. Lots of the Republicans even that I follow have all turned on the party. The ones still left are those who are running now.

I guess the closest thing to that is Facebook, but they only know that you voted if you click on the button, for now...
 
NeverTrumpGOP said:
Put it another way. If the blue wave is much bigger than predicted b/c polls only count registered and/or likely voters. There isn't a metric that I know of that can count or estimate the number of new voters that come in. It seems like every time Trump spews something that alienates a new group of people they all revolt, register to vote, and donate money to the Democrats. Lots of the Republicans even that I follow have all turned on the party. The ones still left are those who are running now.
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Hard to say.

Polls can underestimate both support for Republicans and Democrats. In 2012 in looked like Romney had a fighting chance, but come election day it wasn't even close. Obviously, the polls where off at the state level in places like Michigan.

The big mistake pollsters made was not re-polling often enough and seeing the 'undecideds' break for Trump in critical states.
 
MovingPictures said:
As of this moment FiveThirtyEight rates Democrats as having an 84.1% chance of retaking the House and gaining 39 seats, and Republicans having a 79.5% chance of keeping the Senate.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/?ex_cid=midterms-header

If this turns out to be another missed forecast, I'd say stick a fork in the polling industry, as nobody will take them seriously again.

Obviously, I hope their predictions are correct.
Click to expand...

If people are lying to them either because they want to embarrass the pollsters or because they are embarrassed to tell the truth ( the theory being that for some reason people dont want to say that they like Trump and that they will vote Trump...as an example).....well, I am not sure that there is a way around that.

This is a great place to make the argument that we really do what people to speak and to speak their minds fully, where ever their minds are, so that we know where there minds are.
 
Just remember that even if their methodology is absolutely perfect and they give something an 84% of happening then that means 16% of the time that thing isn’t going to happen. And things with a 16% of happening happen all the time. If you want to know if a pollster is good at what they do you have to look at their whole track record and see if the percentages they cite are similar to the percentage of actual outcomes.
 
NeverTrumpGOP said:
Put it another way. If the blue wave is much bigger than predicted b/c polls only count registered and/or likely voters. There isn't a metric that I know of that can count or estimate the number of new voters that come in. It seems like every time Trump spews something that alienates a new group of people they all revolt, register to vote, and donate money to the Democrats. Lots of the Republicans even that I follow have all turned on the party. The ones still left are those who are running now.

I guess the closest thing to that is Facebook, but they only know that you voted if you click on the button, for now...
Click to expand...

LOL. Guess you forgot about 2016.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
Just remember that even if their methodology is absolutely perfect and they give something an 84% of happening then that means 16% of the time that thing isn’t going to happen. And things with a 16% of happening happen all the time. If you want to know if a pollster is good at what they do you have to look at their whole track record and see if the percentages they cite are similar to the percentage of actual outcomes.
Click to expand...

After what happened re Clinton Corp v Trump no, that wont fly.....if the R's keep the House the pollsters will be determined to have been wrong yet again.
 
MovingPictures said:
Hard to say.

Polls can underestimate both support for Republicans and Democrats. In 2012 in looked like Romney had a fighting chance, but come election day it wasn't even close. Obviously, the polls where off at the state level in places like Michigan.

The big mistake pollsters made was not re-polling often enough and seeing the 'undecideds' break for Trump in critical states.
Click to expand...

I think 538 has the best/most detailed operation of them all. You can clearly see where they get all their information. Some sites don't do due diligence to the smaller races like 538 does. Polling is a tough industry and I think even Nate Silver was dumbfounded after 2016. It seems like the site took a major hit and ABC bought them. But he came back stronger and perhaps learned form mistakes? We shall see.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
After what happened re Clinton Corp v Trump no, that wont fly.....if the R's keep the House the pollsters will be determined to have been wrong yet again.
Click to expand...

What won’t fly? Math?

ETA: you are probably right as far as the opinion of the general public who don’t have an understanding of probabilities. They are the same people who keep the Vegas lights on.
 
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Hawkeye10 said:
If people are lying to them either because they want to embarrass the pollsters or because they are embarrassed to tell the truth ( the theory being that for some reason people dont want to say that they like Trump and that they will vote Trump...as an example).....well, I am not sure that there is a way around that.

This is a great place to make the argument that we really do what people to speak and to speak their minds fully, where ever their minds are, so that we know where there minds are.
Click to expand...

Three things:

1. One reason Trump won in 2016 was because people were getting tired of the extreme political correctness of the extremist left.

2. The fear of being fat shamed and intimidated and called names by your family, friends, co-workers, etc. caused many people to lie to the pollsters and then these people went to the privacy of the voting booths, where they were free to vote without being shamed, intimidated, and called names by the extremist left

3. None of this has changed.
 
MovingPictures said:
As of this moment FiveThirtyEight rates Democrats as having an 84.1% chance of retaking the House and gaining 39 seats, and Republicans having a 79.5% chance of keeping the Senate.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/?ex_cid=midterms-header

If this turns out to be another missed forecast, I'd say stick a fork in the polling industry, as nobody will take them seriously again.

Obviously, I hope their predictions are correct.
Click to expand...

You do realize that those predictions equivalently mean that the Dems have a 21.5% chance of taking the Senate and the Repubs have a 16.9% chance of holding the House, right? And that both sets of odds are hard but not impossible to overcome?
 
Phys251 said:
You do realize that those predictions equivalently mean that the Dems have a 21.5% chance of taking the Senate and the Repubs have a 16.9% chance of holding the House, right? And that both sets of odds are hard but not impossible to overcome?
Click to expand...

There was about a 98% chance that Trump would not win in 2016. Almost no one anywhere predicted it.
 
Moderate Right said:
Three things:

1. One reason Trump won in 2016 was because people were getting tired of the extreme political correctness of the extremist left.

2. The fear of being fat shamed and intimidated and called names by your family, friends, co-workers, etc. caused many people to lie to the pollsters and then these people went to the privacy of the voting booths, where they were free to vote without being shamed, intimidated, and called names by the extremist left

3. None of this has changed.
Click to expand...

Thanks for describing why conservatives are always in a constant state of being whiny loud-mouth victims w/racist inclinations! It's almost like you are ashamed for voting for Trump and just don't realize it yet.

If everyone is telling you that you are crazy....
 
Moderate Right said:
There was about a 98% chance that Trump would not win in 2016. Almost no one anywhere predicted it.
Click to expand...

That is factually inaccurate. Even on the night before the 2016 election, 538 had his win percentage in the high 20s. Again, those kinds of odds are not impossible to overcome.
 
Phys251 said:
You do realize that those predictions equivalently mean that the Dems have a 21.5% chance of taking the Senate and the Repubs have a 16.9% chance of holding the House, right? And that both sets of odds are hard but not impossible to overcome?
Click to expand...
No, I'm a complete idiot and had no idea.
 
Moderate Right said:
Three things:

1. One reason Trump won in 2016 was because people were getting tired of the extreme political correctness of the extremist left.

2. The fear of being fat shamed and intimidated and called names by your family, friends, co-workers, etc. caused many people to lie to the pollsters and then these people went to the privacy of the voting booths, where they were free to vote without being shamed, intimidated, and called names by the extremist left

3. None of this has changed.
Click to expand...

Well after the Supreme Court nomination and Jordan Peterson running around talking to 3,000 people some nights and with millions of Youtube watches a month...ya.

And then too that is that son-of-a-gun Tucker Carlson, making the Rebellions argument into a book, #1 on the NYT's best seller list.

The Rebellion seems to have found some firm footing.

Maybe we get people to the polls.

AGAIN
 
Phys251 said:
That is factually inaccurate. Even on the night before the 2016 election, 538 had his win percentage in the high 20s. Again, those kinds of odds are not impossible to overcome.
Click to expand...
But they didn't just miss it by a little, they missed by A LOT.

Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania weren't even in the ballpark of a possibility.

Their mistake was they assumed those states were a given for Clinton, and didn't bother to do late polling, which would have shown movement towards Trump.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
538 gave Trump a 28.6% of winning in 2016.
Click to expand...
Which was based mostly off of a few tightening popular vote polls, not local state polls, that they failed miserably to survey.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
538 gave Trump a 28.6% of winning in 2016.
Click to expand...

The least wrong was Nate Silver...and he was so wrong that he took it upon himself to reevaluate everything that he though he knew because clearly he had been majorly wrong someplace.....something that everyone should have been doing starting Nov 9 2016 but almost no one did.....Because America Sucks now.....We used to be better.
 
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MovingPictures said:
But they didn't just miss it by a little, they missed by A LOT.

Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania weren't even in the ballpark of a possibility.

Their mistake was they assumed those states were a given for Clinton, and didn't bother to do late polling, which would have shown movement towards Trump.
Click to expand...

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

Wisconsin: 16.5% chance for Trump
Michigan: 21.1%
Pennsylvania: 23.0%

Hillary would have had to win all three of those states to win, given that FL and NC went red.

Again, not insurmountable odds. You're repeating one of the greatest myths of the 2016 election and trying to make it into a fact.
 
Phys251 said:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

Wisconsin: 16.5% chance for Trump
Michigan: 21.1%
Pennsylvania: 23.0%

Hillary would have had to win all three of those states to win, given that FL and NC went red.

Again, not insurmountable odds. You're repeating one of the greatest myths of the 2016 election and trying to make it into a fact.
Click to expand...
I'm not repeat a myth, it's a fact that there was little polling done in those states late in the game, and it contributed to a public misconception that the electoral college wasn't itself tightening, and undecided voters breaking for Trump.

The biggest issue was that liberal voters really didn't want to vote for Clinton, but were willing to in order to keep Trump out of the WH. However, when the polls showed Clinton up by a country mile, it led to complacency and third party votes, and in the critical swing states it had devastating results.
 
MovingPictures said:
I'm not repeat a myth, it's a fact that there was little polling done in those states late in the game, and it contributed to a public misconception that the electoral college wasn't itself tightening, and undecided voters breaking for Trump.

The biggest issue was that liberal voters really didn't want to vote for Clinton, but were willing to in order to keep Trump out of the WH. However, when the polls showed Clinton up by a country mile, it led to complacency and third party votes, and in the critical swing states it had devastating results.
Click to expand...

Do I need to remind you of the Comey Effect? Don't forget that this included when he announced TWO DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION that the investigation was a wrap. Polls simply did not have time to account for all the tRump supporters who got triggered by this.
 
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