Which may be why Trump under-polled in NH.
It’s called the RCP Average because they usually take 3 polls, and average them. That’s all. Not really sure what the big deal is.
Trumpeters ever holding on to the myth that DJT is some sort of wunderknabe, rather than the socialist tyrant in waiting he really is ... and I dislike all the other losers in both parties.
Very sad the country finds itself in the dire straits it has entered. Glad I’m as old as I am, seeing US politics come to the sad state it has fallen into by way of an electorate that is more interested in entertainment than civics, and now unable to tell anything about anyone unless they are told what to look for - usually by way of the politician’s own rhetoric and wishful thinking.
Yeah. It’s an average of polls.
If you want to do more in-depth statistical analysis of the polling data, feel free. But it’s a nice quick view at an average and a good place to find quick links to all of the major polling.
Double posting does not increase post accuracy.
Thanks for taking the time to lay it out. I’ve known it, just being the type whose motto is “In God we trust, everyone else bring facts and data and be prepared to defend it”. ;-)
To be honest, I’m not sure some polls are anything but smoke and mirrors BS intended to influence public opinion. All it takes is a fancy-sounding credible name to be in the polling business, right? So what’s to stop “Free Republic/University of Hardknocks Polling” from announcing the results of their latest polls without doing anything more than put the desired numbers into a press release? Nobody vets anything nowadays, and I’ll bet you it would get picked up and publicized by organizations who liked the numbers.
But blatant phonyfacting aside, political polls are always a good reminder of Mark Twain’s famous saying....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
RCP doesn’t poll, the “RCP Averages” poll is just an average of available polls that are taken out there either from independent firms or the media elite.
Given that the individual polls may all have a distinctively different methodologies, it makes more sense treating each as a individual data point rather than do a weighted average as you suggest.
That 1000 sample poll maybe have been done by a very poor sampling technique, and the 300 sample poll may have a superb sampling technique and is actually much more accurate. If you just do a weighted average you let the much poorer sampled poll dominate the result over the much better sampled poll.
I think it is run by the Quisling Hugh Hewitt.
While on a strictly mathematical scale that holds water... however
For RCP to perform simple weighted averaging would also fly in the face of statiscal anlysis theory.
To go deeper on only one level is improper. They would need to do whole scale secondary analysis to compensate for adjusted MOE, modeling, and assignment of confidence category.
Its not intended to be a holistic reanalysis. It’s a snapshot. No need to make a mountain out of a molehill IMO.
Never made much sense to me - doesn’t take into account what the current trend is.....
>> The poll of 2000 voters has way more weight than the one of 100 voters <<
You obviously know little or nothing about mathematical statistics and sampling theory. The size of a sample has no significant bearing on the predicted mean, only on the standard deviation. It’s one of the first things you’re taught in any introductory statistics course.
(30% x 2000) + (15% x 100) = 600 + 15 = 615 voters out of 2100 = 29.3%
One can normalize the percentages by making an assumption that 15% of 100 could be extrapolated to 15% of 2000 to give 300.Then 600 + 300 = 900 out of 4000. And 900/4000 = 22.5%