[PREV - SAFE_BETS] [TOP]
POLLS_AND_REALITY
November 17, 2016
Can we trust polling data?
Answer: no.
Should we then just go with our guts?
Answer: hell, no. Certainly not with my gut.
This is a year where our expectations
were all wrong, and barely anyone is
saying they're sorry.
Me: I trusted what the polling aggregators say,
because despite my suspicions about pre-election It used to be
polls, they've gotten things right many times every year I'd be
when I had trouble believing them. staring at the
polls wondering how
The polling aggregators essentially point the it was possible
finger upstream: if the polls are wrong, it's they could be
not their fault. right. Could this
be the year that
The polling firms themselves are saying stuff the old polling
like "well, maybe stuff changed right before methodologies hit a
the election". wall, and they were
blatantly wrong?
That in turn leads to still another problem
in political epistemology: Can we actually I mean, telephone
assume that the official election results polling? In this
are accurate? day and age? I
never answer the
Our beloved mainstream phone myself, and
media pundits are many people are
always quick to sneer You know, the switching to
at suggestions of pundits. The folks cellphones...
rigged elections, but who kept telling us
the fact remains that Trump was dead. The And they're *outraged*
our voting systems are one's who figured by phone spam on
too complex and have Bernie wasn't a cellphones. If only
inadequate checks on Serious candidate. all communications
them for anyone to The people who are were treated the same
really trust them. plunging ahead way.
telling us why what
happened, and what's But the pollsters have
going to happen their tricks to try
next, despite doing to calibrate the data,
worse than a applying weighting
dart-throwing chimp. factors to compensate
for skewed populations
in the people who
respond.
--------
[NEXT - KRUGMAN_BERNIE_WARS]