Have Pollsters Figured Out How to Poll the Midwest?

RCP ^ | September 11, 2020 | Sean Trende

[MinorityRepublican]

In 2016, as I was preparing to write my “Why Hillary Will Win” piece, I decided to have my able then-assistant, David Byler (now of Washington Post fame), do a bit of research. His job was to look up the share of the electorate that pollsters were anticipating for whites without college degrees and for African Americans.

What he found put an end to the piece. It seemed a big bet was being placed on 2012 levels of black turnout occurring in 2016 and, more importantly, that pollsters were badly underestimating turnout for whites without college degrees. In previous years, that hadn’t really mattered – whites with and without college degrees voted Republican at roughly the same levels. Underestimating the share of whites without college degrees and overestimating whites with college degrees wouldn’t have mattered in 2012 or 2008, because their votes were fungible.

On a hunch, I went back and looked at the poll errors for 2013-15, and it became apparent that the errors for 2016 followed much the same pattern: They were concentrated in areas with large numbers of whites without college degrees. Indeed, the size of the poll error correlated heavily with whites-without-college-degree share (p<.001); you could explain about one-third of the difference in the size of poll miss just from knowing the share of the electorate that was whites without a college degree.

We all know what happened next. Trump surprised observers by winning states that Republican presidential candidates hadn’t carried since Debbie Gibson and Tiffany fought it out for top placement in the Top 40 charts. The misses were particularly pronounced in the Midwest.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Have pollsters figured out how to poll the Midwest?

There. Fixed it.

[Grampa Dave]

Pollsters = Hucksters!

Political scientist, Lindsay Rogers, coined the word pollster as a pejorative takeoff of the word huckster.

Why the News Is Not the Truth - Harvard Business Reviewhbr.org › 1995/05 ›

The news media and the government have created a charade that serves their own interests but misleads the public 24/7.

[nwrep]

Short answer: yes, they have become more accurate than in 2016.

[Phillyred]

they aren’t interested in figuring out how to poll. They are simy running the dem ground game.

[Parley Baer]

I do not think the most pollsters care. They are only after a poll with a predetermined outcome.

[Gay State Conservative]

You just know that the huge majority of the people in that recent poll who said they're afraid to talk about the political beliefs are Trump supporters.

I'm one of them. I have two Trump t-shirts (one which I bought at Trump Tower in Manhattan) that I only wear to Trump rallies. And I'd love to have Trump bumper stickers on my car but I know I'd have my car keyed or my tires slashed. I've had both things happen to me.

That's why polls are so inaccurate.

[ConservativeInPA]

These pollsters are asinine. The whole business of with and without college degrees is ludicrous. Perhaps they would gain an understanding if they looked at what type of college degrees. As for those that don’t have college degrees, they can gain a understanding from those peoples’ primary influencers, public service unions for example. It boils down whether people are influenced by conservatives or Marxists. There are many ways to get to the same two places.

[kjam22]

No.

https://youtu.be/HqnK0I_KtGU

[Billthedrill]

Polling isn't what it was largely due to three more or less unheralded developments that have changed the culture radically. The first of these was the answering machine, which offered telephone customers a chance to filter calls from unknown sources. The second, biggest one, was the advent of the cellphone, whereby the customer pays for the minutes and the poll-taker is forbidden by law from poaching on anyone's who hasn't given prior permission. Thirdly, and this is recent (it was pivotal in 2016 and is one reason Hillary lost Wisconsin) is the replacement of mass polling with targeted sampling manipulated by data analytics, the latter technique being much cheaper and faster than traditional polling but not quite as sensitive to short term changes in trending. What these developments did was to complicate the mathematical models they fed beyond the level of reliability they used to have.

All of this is quite aside from the weaponization of poll results to manipulate public behavior. The cold truth is that the only polls that are worth anything these days are the "internal" ones the public never sees because they influence campaign strategy. Even those are subject to the limitations mentioned above. All we can really determine from posted poll results anymore is what direction the media have decided to take to perform that manipulation, not what people really think. Different world.

[EC Washington]

I was actually polled for the first time in my life - Indiana Republican Party going door to door polling for the RINO Governor Eric “the idiot” Holcomb. Governor Holcomb has dropped 14 points in the polls since he put out a mask mandate in August.

Holcomb had a 20 point lead that has now dropped to 6. President Trump has a 22 point lead in Indiana.

[elcid1970]

Tell a stranger on the phone that you plan to vote for Trump?

Might as well tell them you own guns and how many.

Trump’s silent army of voters (sometimes referred to as his Red Army) have the pollsters frustrated and angry.

One actually sputtered, “It’s your civic DUTY to answer pollsters honestly!!”