Saturday, November 5, 2016

Who To Believe?

The polling numbers are all over the place.

Which poll do you believe?

The broadcast media often quotes the Real Clear Politics poll, currently showing Hillary Clinton at +3.  Except it's not actually a poll.  It is an average of multiple polls taken by multiple polling organizations on behalf of multiple clients.  And because it's an average of polls previously taken, it tends to look backward rather than represent a snapshot of voter preference today.

Bill Mitchell, a radio talk show host and political researcher, does a good job of unpacking the data behind the polling results. (If you are on Twitter, follow him at @mitchellvii).  The polls that have Clinton ahead are always found to have oversampled Democrat voters compared with the percentage of Republican voters.  While the voter base does, in fact, include more Ds than Rs, that number is only about 3%.  Most of the polls that predict a Clinton victory include samples that are Democrat voters +7 or greater.

Those oversampled polls are included in the Real Clear Politics average.

The LA Times/Dornsife poll is interesting for several reasons.  First, it got the results of the Romney/Obama presidential election exactly right.  Second, it is taken every morning using the same 3,000+ carefully screened voters each time.  It is more accurate in measuring the mood of the electorate on any given day than other polls, and especially better than an average of backward looking polls.

The LA Times/Dornsife poll has Trump +5.6 this morning.

Here's another thing about polls:  They don't measure what may be really important.  Say a new poll comes out that screams [Candidate X] is +11 in Texas!!  Guess what - the +11 doesn't matter.  To win the Texas electoral college votes (what really matters) all that's necessary is that a candidate is +.01, or some number greater than the electoral margin of fraud and corruption.

Did you read the article linked by Drudge this morning, by the way?  Pollsters have contributed heavily to the Clinton campaign.  Not so much to the Trump campaign.  And per the leaked Podesta emails, the Clinton campaign has given (most) polling companies sets of instructions on how their sampling should be done.  And that stooge Frank Luntz has been doing polling work for the State Department (aka the Clinton campaign) for several years.

So.  Take the polls with a grain of salt.  The propaganda is baked into most of them.  Watch the LA Times/Dornsife poll with interest.  Wait for the "surprises" to dump sometime this afternoon in time for the Sunday morning talk shows.

And Tuesday night keep an eye on the vote tally in Pennsylvania.  Who wins Pennsylvania wins the election, that's my projection.

14 comments:

Trooper York said...

The polls are rigged. That is why they are dropping ten points because they have to come close to what the real numbers are.

The entire media/polling/consulting class needs to be destroyed. Both the Republican and Democratic professional political class united to destroy Trump because he wouldn't pay them. He didn't pay millions to pollsters and stupid commercials and spending money hand over fist in fees and commissions the way that morons like Walker and Jebbie did in the primaries. Trump did not take millions upon millions from the usual suspects like the Kochs. He raised his money from small donors. The people. Just the way the media scumbags said you should to get the big money influence out of products. They ignored that. Just as they ignored every positive thing that Trump did. Aided of course by the media chorus.

They need to be destroyed root and branch and salt poured over their ashes.

Trooper York said...

Big money influence out of politics. Sorry.

Also sorry for jumping on your post Michael. I rescheduled. Sorry.

Michael Haz said...

The posts are rigged. :-)

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Are polls rigged so that Dems can cheat? I think so. We all think so, right?

This is why it's important to make sure the vote count it above the cheat line. Is that even possible anymore?

I was reading a link at hotair about early vote counts in NV. The journo-list breathlessly insists that the race in NV is over, and not a single vote has been counted.

The polls were close in 2012- with similar R/D spreads. and look who won.

ricpic said...

The thing that gives me the most confidence is that Pat Cadell, a Democrat who has been in the game a long time and worked in the Carter campaign, says 2016 reminds him of 1980.

Chip Ahoy said...

Polls are bogus. And so are news presenters.

Induce a meditative moment and feel the Force all around you permeating all national space. Allow your body to sense the zeitgeist of the nation and feel the conflict out there between embedded corruption that's dying and positive energy forcing unwanted change, feel light overtake darkness with all the aggression of flowers blooming forcing their way into strange physical reality drawing energy from soil and from light. MAGA.

chickelit said...

Shouldn't that be "Whom To Believe?"

I'm not accusin'

Rest my dative case

chickelit said...

The masts and polls of all ships of state are rigged. It's incumbent upon them.

edutcher said...

My God, she actually gets it.

On other fronts, RCP may be using polls as much as a month old. Or the same poll taken on 2 different dates.

ricpic said...

The thing that gives me the most confidence is that Pat Cadell, a Democrat who has been in the game a long time and worked in the Carter campaign, says 2016 reminds him of 1980.

Caddell pulls no punches. And I've been saying all year this is like '80.

And '68.

edutcher said...

PS Right now, behavior is fascinating. The Demos are not axcting like they're 10 up.

Or even 2.

They're acting like they're 5 down.

And The Donald is in MN today. Very interesting.

rcocean said...

I don't think anyone really know how its going to turn out. Or how accurate the polls are. Trump might squeak by or Hillary might win by 5 points.

Its going to all about Turnout. Blacks, Immigrants, Jews, Hispanics, etc. are all in Hillary's corner but how many are going to show up and vote for her? She been AWOL on the campaign trail, but nobody seems to like her that much.

Trump's supporters are enthusiastic but will the white working class (his target audience) really vote for him in large numbers or will he only pick up a few more than Romney? And what about White women, are they buying all the "war on women" bullshit or will they vote for Trump?

Personally, I think Trump will lose because the American people are stuck on stupid. Just remember, Reagan only got elected because of Jimmy Carter, Double-digit inflation and interest rates, plus high employment, Iran Hostage Crisis, Afghanistan, and even then only got 51% of the vote.

bagoh20 said...

Isn't the whole idea of prediction of inevitable events this late kinda crazy? For people betting for money it matters, but for everyone else it really doesn't. The real answer will come, and the moment it does all these endless polls instantly become meaningless, which in actuality they already were . Since nobody really knows if they are right or wrong anyway, they really have no value. Earlier ones can help a candidate make adjustments to their strategy, but that's why they do their own, and at this late date change is not possible.

For everyone else, they don't really have much value the whole time. It's just masturbation that the media pretends is content, analysis or reporting, and it dominates the news even though it's just pretend information. We get into it because it's entertaining as a proxy for the actual event. It extends the whole contest and makes it game day every day for months. I think we just need more to do with our lives. Actual stuff is happening every day with certainty, not guesswork - things you can count on and use to move ahead or change direction, but polling is really just pretending to know something that you absolutely do not. Who needs the distraction?

edutcher said...

rcocean said...

Personally, I think Trump will lose because the American people are stuck on stupid. Just remember, Reagan only got elected because of Jimmy Carter

Same here.

edutcher said...

Trump is up against the Beast, worse than Bucketmouth?

I'd say.

(just to make sure no one misunderstands.)