Originally posted by @kazetnagorraNo, I'm saying it is common to have close presidential elections here in the USA. It is a safe bet to guess that it will be a close election because it is likely it will be close.
Wait... are you saying those poll numbers are made up?
Originally posted by @metal-brainWhat does that have to do with those poll numbers? They weren't made up by pollsters guessing that the election would be close with Clinton the slight favourite.
No, I'm saying it is common to have close presidential elections here in the USA. It is a safe bet to guess that it will be a close election because it is likely it will be close.
Originally posted by @kazetnagorraYou are avoiding the Iowa caucus. Trump had a nearly 10% lead in the vote there. If you want to conserve money there is no need to go past one state.
Again, look at the pre-election polls, predicting a 3.3% lead in the popular vote for Clinton.
Now look at the final result, a 2.1% lead in the popular vote for Clinton. A difference of only 1.2 percentage points.
We knew that the Electoral College slightly favoured Republicans so a small popular vote victory would likely not be sufficient for a win. The polls were accurate, no matter how much you screech, rant and rave otherwise.
Parliament is similar to climate scientists in that they are both expected to be experts in their fields. Parliament are expected to be experts in politics and climate scientists are expected to be experts in global warming theory. What is the vote percentage of parliament in the UK? What is to keep them from not voting and go golfing instead?
Originally posted by @freakykbhWhatever people working for pollsters said in the aftermath of the election, the pre-election polls did not indicate that Clinton was the heavy favourite to win. Again, read my link, look at those poll numbers, and compare them to the final result.
Screech, rant and rave?
You insufferable tool.
I'm quoting the news of the day, which you are desperately trying to deflect from.
Google it and listen to its screeching, ranting and raving--- page after page after page, all saying the same thing: the polls had it wrong.
The quote provided above FROM ONE OF THE LEADERS IN POLLING unequivocally states t ...[text shortened]... ly wrong.
Do you have a point, since your original one has been destroyed by historical fact?
Originally posted by @kazetnagorraMaybe I'm missing the link to which you continue to refer.
Whatever people working for pollsters said in the aftermath of the election, the pre-election polls did not indicate that Clinton was the heavy favourite to win. Again, read my link, look at those poll numbers, and compare them to the final result.
In this thread, I find one post from you related to the election, which has a reference to Wikipedia's article on stats.
Is this the link you think supports your claim that pollsters had it right--- despite the pollsters themselves declaring they got it horribly wrong?
And, by "pollsters themselves," I don't mean commentators, people working in the field, random media pundits or anyone else: I'm speaking of the polling organizations themselves, as seen in the quote from one of them already.
Originally posted by @freakykbhHere is the link, again:
Maybe I'm missing the link to which you continue to refer.
In this thread, I find one post from you related to the election, which has a reference to Wikipedia's article on stats.
Is this the link you think supports your claim that pollsters had it right--- despite the pollsters themselves declaring they got it horribly wrong?
And, by "pollsters themse ...[text shortened]... speaking of the polling organizations themselves, as seen in the quote from one of them already.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html
What people working for polling organizations say about their own polls is irrelevant. The polls speak for themselves, and they didn't get it horribly wrong. They were, historically speaking, very accurate.
Originally posted by @kazetnagorraMost of them show H up a few percent, I guess that is within margin of error? Only on shows T up.
Here is the link, again:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html
What people working for polling organizations say about their own polls is irrelevant. The polls speak for themselves, and they didn't get it horribly wrong. They were, historically speaking, very accurate.
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Originally posted by @kazetnagorraAnd you're claiming these compiled results say what, exactly?
Here is the link, again:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html
What people working for polling organizations say about their own polls is irrelevant. The polls speak for themselves, and they didn't get it horribly wrong. They were, historically speaking, very accurate.
Accurate?
As in, they had Trump winning the election?
Or, accurate, as in, they were OVERWHELMINGLY calling it for Clinton?
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Originally posted by @freakykbhYes, Freaky, a difference of only 1.2 percentage points with the end result is accurate, as polls go.
And you're claiming these compiled results say what, exactly?
Accurate?
As in, they had Trump winning the election?
Or, accurate, as in, they were OVERWHELMINGLY calling it for Clinton?
These polls did not "overwhelmingly call the election for Clinton." At most they indicated she'd be a slight favourite to win; this is in broad agreement with FiveThirtyEight's model (based on state polling), which gave Clinton two to one odds in favour. Try playing Russian roulette with two bullets in the revolver chamber and see how overwhelmingly confident you are that you won't kill yourself.
Originally posted by @sonhouseThe weighted average of polls (more accurate than any single poll) overestimated Clinton's margin of victory by only 1.2 percentage points. We knew that the Electoral College favoured Trump, so Clinton would have needed at least a lead of one or two percentage points in the popular vote to also likely win the EC, meaning these polls predicted Clinton was only a single percentage point in the "safe" region of a likely victory - easily within polling and systematic errors, and clearly showing that Trump had a good chance to the win the election albeit as a slight underdog.
Most of them show H up a few percent, I guess that is within margin of error? Only on shows T up.
The polls were accurate.
Originally posted by @kazetnagorraClose presidential elections are common in the USA. Odds are the next election will be close as well. We don't need a poll to predict that.
Whatever people working for pollsters said in the aftermath of the election, the pre-election polls did not indicate that Clinton was the heavy favourite to win. Again, read my link, look at those poll numbers, and compare them to the final result.
You look like a fool saying "look, the polls were right and I'm Captain Obvious!".
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Originally posted by @metal-brainSo you are now saying that if the polls often predict the election will be close and they are indeed close then that isn't an indicator that the polls are reliable? -stupid metal-brain logic. If anything, the opposite is true.
Close presidential elections are common in the USA. Odds are the next election will be close as well. We don't need a poll to predict that.
History shows the polls are unusually quite reliable.
The measure of the polls reliability is indicated merely by how accurately they predict the percentage of people that will vote for each party thus how often the elections are close is irrelevant to that.
Originally posted by @metal-brainYour point makes no sense, since the polls don't assume anything about the outcome, they just ask people who they will vote for. If anything, the intuitive prediction would be that Clinton would be the heavy favourite to win pitted against a drooling imbecile, but the polls showed that this intuition was wrong.
Close presidential elections are common in the USA. Odds are the next election will be close as well. We don't need a poll to predict that.
You look like a fool saying "look, the polls were right and I'm Captain Obvious!".
Originally posted by @kazetnagorraYes, Freaky, a difference of only 1.2 percentage points with the end result is accurate, as polls go.
Yes, Freaky, a difference of only 1.2 percentage points with the end result is accurate, as polls go.
These polls did not "overwhelmingly call the election for Clinton." At most they indicated she'd be a slight favourite to win; this is in broad agreement with FiveThirtyEight's model (based on state polling), which gave Clinton two to one odds in fa ...[text shortened]... the revolver chamber and see how overwhelmingly confident you are that you won't kill yourself.
Accurate for a poll is apparently the sticking point.
The charge is that the polls got it wrong.
And they did.
You are confusing ‘accurate by historical standards’ i.e., in comparison to previous polling efforts and “accurate” which means they got it right.
Which they clearly did not.
These polls did not "overwhelmingly call the election for Clinton." At most they indicated she'd be a slight favourite to win; this is in broad agreement with FiveThirtyEight's model (based on state polling), which gave Clinton two to one odds in favour.
In the source you cited, we see 162 different polls listed from May 6 to November 6.
Trump was favored in ten of those polls, for a whopping 6%.
That’s better than the ties, which only amounted to 3%.
However, the proof is in the pudding on Clinton, who they had winning 91% of all polls listed--- from a spread as low as 1 and as high as 14.
Try playing Russian roulette with two bullets in the revolver chamber and see how overwhelmingly confident you are that you won't kill yourself.
I wouldn’t play roulette with anything as valuable as my life, but…
You couldn’t ask for better odds than the ones you cited, if one were inclined to actually do such a thing.
You know, as long as the bullet was either a tie or in favor of Trump.
Hell, even both of them together would be preferred to the 91% in favor of Clinton.
I guess it comes down to your sense of reality in comparison to say, everyone else in the world.
Here are ten citations--- the very first ten on Google--- which addressed the issue of the failure of the polls.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/27/media/status-threat-diana-mutz-reliable-sources/index.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-hillary-clinton-why-polls-wrong-2017-5
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/how-did-everyone-get-2016-wrong-presidential-election-231036
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/general-election-result-jeremy-corbyn-labour-journalists-mainstream-media-real-people-believe-a7786256.html
https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/media-culpa-the-press-and-the-election-result
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/11/09/pollsters-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-2016-presidential-election/93523012/
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/the-real-reason-the-media-got-this-election-all-wrong/
https://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/502014643/4-possible-reasons-the-polls-got-it-so-wrong-this-year
But wait.
It gets worse for your claims.
The American Association for Public Opinion Research, a 17-member executive board “is the leading professional organization of public opinion and survey research professionals in the U.S., with members from academia, media, government, the non-profit sector and private industry.”
After the disastrous results of the 2016 election, they felt it important to rally the troops, regroup and address their culpability in the perception of polling failure:
“The 2016 presidential election was a jarring event for polling in the United States. Pre-election polls fueled high-profile predictions that Hillary Clinton’s likelihood of winning the presidency was about 90 percent, with estimates ranging from 71 to over 99 percent. When Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidency in the early hours of November 9th, it came as a shock even to his own pollsters (Jacobs and House 2016). There was (and continues to be) widespread consensus that the polls failed.
But did the polls fail? And if so why? Those are the central questions addressed in this report, which was commissioned by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).
https://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/Reports/An-Evaluation-of-2016-Election-Polls-in-the-U-S.aspx
Much hand-wringing and explanation ensues regarding how they really, technically, hey-if-you-actually-look-at-it-from-this-angle-and-with-these-twelve-subfactors-considered, kinda got it right--- including this fantastic line repeated in various forms:
”Another possible explanation for polling error in 2016 is…”
This august board of experts concludes…
5. CONCLUSIONS
The committee, commissioned by AAPOR, conducted an extensive investigation of the performance of pre-election polls in 2016. While the general public reaction was that “the polls failed,” we found the reality to be more complex – a position held by a number of industry experts (Newport 2016; Silver 2016a; Trende 2016). Some polls, indeed, had large, problematic errors, but many polls did not. Critically, the reasons for the polling errors are no longer a mystery. We found evidence for several factors that led polls to under-state support for Trump relative to the election outcomes in battleground states.
And then they put their additional 13 reasons why they failed.
Which, they insist, they did not.
Except they did.
Otherwise, why did they put out the report?
Is there a report entitled “An Evaluation of 2012 Election Polls in the US” or one for 2008?
That’s a good question, Freaky!
Was there another time when the folks at AAPOR felt compelled to explain how they got it so wrong?
As it turns out, they had a similar faux pas back in 2008--- which they dutifully addressed in their reports ”An Evaluation of the Methodology of the 2008 Pre-Election Primary Polls” (March 2009) and ”Pre-Election Polling in New Hampshire: What Went Wrong?” (January 2008) the latter of which actually contained the word “wrong” in its title… a kind of a hint for those who suggest or think that polling is somehow error free on account of intention.
From the former (which was submitted with the secondary title of “A Review and Proposal for a New Measure of Poll Accuracy,” for reasons unclear:
:
”The fact that the committee’s work began only after questions were raised about the quality of the polling in the early primaries meant that some avenues of inquiry could not be pursued. Appropriate data to explore these matters were not available (or were not made available) to the committee by those who conducted the polls. This report represents the committee’s best effort to address these issues raised by the 2008 pre-primary polls within the constraints of limited available information.”
and
”Although originally formed in response to the disparity between the pre-election polls and the outcome of the Democratic contest in New Hampshire…”
Both of which underscore the impetus for the reports in the first place.
Quite telling, isn’t it, for them to admit that something went wrong.
Even more telling: the January 2008 report used 518 words on two pages to explain the failure, but needed 22,519 words on 82 pages for their March 2009 report, finalizing all that went wrong in the process… compared to the 42,255 words on 121 pages needed for the 2017 report.
So much for your contention that the polls got it right.
Originally posted by @freakykbhBut they didn't. No one who knows an iota about polling and/or statistics will expect that pollsters get to within one percentage point in an election poll.
The charge is that the polls got it wrong.
And they did.
But hey, keep on googling and copy-pasting. Perhaps you can somehow Google away the 1.2 percentage point difference and magically make it a large discrepancy?