Posted on 10/15/2016 11:17:29 PM PDT by WMarshal
When turnout falls, Democrats perform worse in elections. That general pattern is well known. In making their forecasts, pollsters try to estimate what that turnout will be on the basis of previous elections. This year, pre-election opinion polls were off by the largest amount seen in over 20 years. Could this massive underperformance by Democrats have been connected to a wrong guess about turnout?
(Excerpt) Read more at prospect.org ...
The polling data we’re being fed is based on the 2012 turnout model.
I think we can all agree, that’s not realistic in 2016. Our side will shatter records this year.
I think they are on to something and make some valid points or at least hypothesis. If you examine American politics recently I think people on both sides of the spectrum feel betrayed by our elected leaders.
We had the TEA party and they swept the GOP into controlling congress. What changed? Nothing - they did not cut spending by a dime. This made a populist outsider candidate much more popular.
The left had Occupy Wall Street and many of them gravitated to Sanders - another person who seemed to be an outsider. Meanwhile, on the heels of Obama who promised grandiose things and changed nothing you have mainstream democrats who are deflated with the results. What was the DNC’s answer to all of this political angst? They rigged the game against the DNC version of a populist - Sanders - and they nominated the ultimate insider.
This is already a “rebellion” election on the right, but what if it is a rebellion election on the left? There is very little enthusiasm for Clinton and I think even many of their pundits openly admit this.
If I am right and this piece is on to something - we might be pleasantly surprised in November and it might be far worse for the DNC than we think.
October/November
Reagan Carter Anderson
40% 44% 9%
39% 45% 9%
47% 44% 8%
Actual result
51% 41% 7%
You are correct - the 2012 models don’t capture this election and they will be wrong because they assume that Clinton will get the same votes as Obama. Won’t happen.
The alienation of Sanders supporters (usually reliable voters) may be viewed by history as a fatal mistake by her. Did she truly need to play the games she did to defeat him? Perhaps she did, but she may have won the battle (primary) and lost the war (election). Isn’t it par for the course that the media (and FR) spent so much time agonizing over Cruz supporters abandoning Trump when they were a fraction of Sanders supporters in real numbers?
In the end, more than anything Trump did or did not do, despite all of the hand wringing by a GOP elite that nobody likes..... it may be Clinton who has the knife in her back on election day.
The ghetto crowd doesn’t get excited about midterms, it’s all about the POTUS to them.
Polling is an exact science. The problem is not with polling -- as the article makes clear. The problem is with connecting two different populations: the people you reach in a poll, and the people who vote on election day.
If you poll 1000 adults truly at random, their opinion on a yes no question will have a 95% confidence interval of around +/- 3% for the entire population of 250 million adults.
That is exact a statistical consequence of the Central Limit Theorem and there is no aberration from it; if there were, so many aspects of the world -- including the basic physics of the universe -- would fall apart.
Next, if you randomly examine the ballots of 1000 people who have just voted, you will be able to predict with 95% confidence what the percentages of votes are in the entire voting population to within about +/-3%. Again, there is really no arguing with this.
When FReepers say, "How can these polls be right, they involve so few people?" This is nonsense, pure and simple. It is as dumb as thinking that you have to flip a coin ten million times before you will get close to 50% heads. There is a 95% chance you will get 50% heads +/- just 0.01% by flipping the coin only 10,000 times. It is not the polls per se that break down. What breaks down is the predictive model that attempts to say how the actual voting population on election day compares with the population answering the poll right now. That is where the error comes in. Not in the math, but in the various theories that attempt to relate two different populations -- which are never the same -- to each other.
You’re right. I didn’t think to factor Sanders’ voters into the mix. That really blows up the 2012 model as the same demographic who came out in droves for BO either stays home or votes for the pothead as a protest vote.
We as Republicans know very well that it really stinks being given a “it’s my turn” candidate.
Don’t think this applies to presidential elections so much. Turn out has been up in every election since 1988. The only time it’s been down is 2012, and the Dems won that one.
Thank you.
I thought I was the only one to to take a statistics class in university
Another area where error could creep in is if the sample is not truly random. This does not have to be insidious but may may be respondents being swayed by body language, vocal tone or the connotative meanings of the words used in the questions. At times the researcher is not even aware of this bias.
Then, of course there can be simply a push poll designed to influence an outcome rather than predict it.
“October/November
Reagan Carter Anderson
40% 44% 9%
39% 45% 9%
47% 44% 8%
Actual result
51% 41% 7%”
The 47 44 8 last poll before the election was a “cover your a__” poll that was taken before the election but.....
wait for it....
was not publicly available until _after_ the election.
So when folks went into the voting booths in November 1980 they believed the numbers were 39 45 9 if they trusted the New York Times, Washington Post etal.
This means that they were shocked to learn that the polls were off by twelve points on the Reagan vote.
The notion that so many people decided to vote for Reagan at the last minute is Monday morning quarterbacking and speculation at best.
The media bias against Reagan was amazing to behold, and it is unreasonable to believe that liberal pollsters were able to keep their strong anti-Reagan biases from affecting their selection of questions, potential voters and their analysis and adjustment of the data.
Just as today, the polls were part of the narrative designed to cast the Republican candidate as an extremist, crazy, unfit to be President, etc.
Here is an example of a New York Times “hit piece” on Reagan in October 1980:
Your argument assumes pollsters are honest people.
There is a Reason 94% of the population does not trust media of which the polls are part of.
Trump doesn’t just have issues with Cruz supporters, but even moreso with the Bush and Romney wing of the party. Hillary had 2 million more votes than Trump in her primary and a much higher percentage than Trump, who had the lowest percentage in a GOP primary since 1968. Granted, there were a lot more candidates running against Trump than against Hillary.
I don’t see much evidence that Sanders supporters are disgruntled with Hillary. Democrats tend to unite on a partisan basis at election time because they all agree they viscerally hate Republicans. That is why Hillary’s whole campaign is based on demonizing Trump. She knows that hating Republicans is the one thing that never fails to unite Democrats. Sanders endorsed Hillary early in all the normal, traditional ways primary rivals do. Meanwhile the GOP is the most fractured it’s ever been a month out from a presidential election.
Counting on Sanders voters to “help out” Trump in any way is a foolish strategy in my view. They are the left of the left and will never vote Republican. I doubt they’ll boycott the election either. The animosity between Sanders and Hillary supporters was never anywhere near the level it was between Trump supporters and other GOP voters.
Trump basically has to count on the #NeverTrumpers giving in at the last minute and supporting him in the voting booth because voting Democrat just feels too wrong. I don’t see any way a candidate wins an election if they truly end up with an abnormally low amount of support from their own party.
Turnout was lower in 2000 than 2012
I know. I’m saying it went up every presidential election starting in 1992, except in 2012 it went down, but that didn’t help Romney. In essence, lower turnout did bring down Obama’s margin of victory from 2008, but his margin was so huge in 2008 that it didn’t drop enough to matter.
Still the idea of lower turnout helping Republicans is that the more “casual” voters always lean Democrat, because they’re more ignorant. That’s why registered voter polls always are higher for Dems than likely voter polls.
But if the narrative about a fractured GOP is true and not just media hype, the reason for the lower turnout this time could be GOP likely voters who don’t show up because they don’t like Trump. McCain and Romney both got lower vote totals than Bush did in 2004, so we seem to have already been suffering from GOP candidates who are not as popular as they should be. If Trump can truly turn out new voters, or voters who’ve been staying home for years, that could create a twist in the narrative. So far it doesn’t even seem like anyone in the media is even trying to statistically research if that’s going to happen or not. Which could be a good sign that it IS going to happen if the media wants to ignore it.
It was low turn out because of low enthusiasm which is the case today.
From a piece I posted earlier:
A New Gallup survey has determined that enthusiasm among Democrats is at a 16 year low
Gallup has also found that in general ENTHUSIASM among Democrats is at a 16 year low.
In regard to Gallup’s findings, The Washington Examiner commented, “Just 65 percent of Democrats plan to vote in the election, and it’s just 47 percent among all voters aged 18-34, a trend that has the party worried about the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Republicans hold an 11-point advantage in those planning to vote, 76 percent to 65 percent, but the GOP vote is also at a 16-year low, but by three points compared to nine for the Democrats.”
A compilation of three recent polls that are generally unfriendly to Trump, shows the CNN/ORN poll had her down in enthusiasm among supporters 58/46, the Washington Post/ABC NEWS poll had Clinton down 46/33 and a New York Times/CBS survey showed Clinton behind 45/36 in supporter enthusiasm.
All three linked at
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/296360-enthusiasm-gap-looms-for-clinton
Plus it assumes Romney’s 27% of Hispanic vote. Trump is getting 38%.
The rats since bill have been stealing the elections right from under our noses, the only way to win is MASS TRUNOUT AND LANDSLIDE VICTORY
I think you are confusing the math with the polling itself.. Polling is far from an “exact science”.
Statistics is only a tool of polling methodology. That is the easy part that every schoolboy leans in a beginner course in statistics and probability. You don’t “poll” a jar of multi-colored jellybeans. Jelly beans aren’t undecided if they are blue or red. Jelly beans don’t say they lean blue when the lean red. The inexact nature of “polling” is how many of each color to place in the jar before you select a small sample and apply the simple math, which , as you say, is exact but only to the extent that it provides an exact margin of error and confidence level.
IT is much like the computer model Global Warming science. Garbage in, garbage out. If you are allowed to juice your model’s input, you can make any claim you wish with a very high degree of exactness.
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