The concept of polling is perfectly reasonable and sound. But today, it’s just physically hard to do. You’ve got to reach a representational sample, but if you’re under 50, you’re probably not answering unknown numbers calling your cellphone.
This results in oversampling of populations you can actually reach, such as older Americans with landlines, and then trying to weight the results with other information sources, like demographics data.
The more weighting you have to do, the more opportunities there are for problems to creep in.
If we could solve the sampling problem, polling would be easier and more reliable.
I live in a swing state, in a purple county, which has recently flipped back to blue. Last week polls were saying it was likely to go red.
I get multiple texts and phone calls from pollsters and have never answered any of them. I doubt anyone in my age group ot demographic are doing differently.
I truly believe that, like the economy, polling on paper is so divorced from the reality on the ground that it is useless.
Same here. I never answer political calls, and my phone automatically flags the texts as spam and hides them.
If they did the polling with a quick tap-to-answer UI and there were reassurances that they won’t sell your info so you get even more solicitations, that might work better for the present day. This whole business with calling people is so 1950s.
I truly believe that, like the economy, polling on paper is so divorced from the reality on the ground that it is useless.
Oh, definitely. All I’m saying is that the concept of polling is sound, but the current situation “on the ground” makes polling damn near impossible, and that probably won’t be a permanent state of affairs. Pollsters have run into new technology that broke their methodology before, and figured out ways around it.
But yeah, right now? Polls are pretty goddamn unreliable.
as a concept, sure, polls can show things. i think they are a bad idea tho. they just give azzholes time to shape their words so they can win. anyone in office who actually is trying to do their job properly is going to use their knowledge and desire to do good work. what if polls show that to be “losing?” how does it help society in anyway? i don’t see benefit, only harm (or nothing).
plus pollsters clog up phones and so on. just more marketers, people blabbing and asking questions for a paycheck. seriously, i see zip good about polls, esp political polls.
To get a poll representative of a population, you need an SRS – simple random sample. The people you poll are chosen completely at random from an unbiased list.
That’s incredibly difficult to do when the person chosen can decline. And as far as getting an unbiased list, good luck. Landlines are lol. Texting doesn’t work either.
I think when everyone had landlines it was probably less biased. But with the state of technology today and the country becoming more diverse? It might be falling apart. They need a new methodology.
The general impression I get is that most people don’t. I actually got one myself the other day, and I actually answered because I didn’t want to make sampling problems worse.
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I wouldn’t say “antiquated” so much as “broken.”
The concept of polling is perfectly reasonable and sound. But today, it’s just physically hard to do. You’ve got to reach a representational sample, but if you’re under 50, you’re probably not answering unknown numbers calling your cellphone.
This results in oversampling of populations you can actually reach, such as older Americans with landlines, and then trying to weight the results with other information sources, like demographics data.
The more weighting you have to do, the more opportunities there are for problems to creep in.
If we could solve the sampling problem, polling would be easier and more reliable.
I live in a swing state, in a purple county, which has recently flipped back to blue. Last week polls were saying it was likely to go red.
I get multiple texts and phone calls from pollsters and have never answered any of them. I doubt anyone in my age group ot demographic are doing differently.
I truly believe that, like the economy, polling on paper is so divorced from the reality on the ground that it is useless.
Same here. I never answer political calls, and my phone automatically flags the texts as spam and hides them.
If they did the polling with a quick tap-to-answer UI and there were reassurances that they won’t sell your info so you get even more solicitations, that might work better for the present day. This whole business with calling people is so 1950s.
Oh, definitely. All I’m saying is that the concept of polling is sound, but the current situation “on the ground” makes polling damn near impossible, and that probably won’t be a permanent state of affairs. Pollsters have run into new technology that broke their methodology before, and figured out ways around it.
But yeah, right now? Polls are pretty goddamn unreliable.
as a concept, sure, polls can show things. i think they are a bad idea tho. they just give azzholes time to shape their words so they can win. anyone in office who actually is trying to do their job properly is going to use their knowledge and desire to do good work. what if polls show that to be “losing?” how does it help society in anyway? i don’t see benefit, only harm (or nothing).
plus pollsters clog up phones and so on. just more marketers, people blabbing and asking questions for a paycheck. seriously, i see zip good about polls, esp political polls.
To get a poll representative of a population, you need an SRS – simple random sample. The people you poll are chosen completely at random from an unbiased list.
That’s incredibly difficult to do when the person chosen can decline. And as far as getting an unbiased list, good luck. Landlines are lol. Texting doesn’t work either.
I think when everyone had landlines it was probably less biased. But with the state of technology today and the country becoming more diverse? It might be falling apart. They need a new methodology.
They were far fewer scam callers in the landline days, too, so it made sense to actually answer your phone.
Why doesn’t texting work? I feel like I might respond to a text
The general impression I get is that most people don’t. I actually got one myself the other day, and I actually answered because I didn’t want to make sampling problems worse.
polling is a scoursge. it doesn’t benefit society. notice how everything went well with broken polls. voting itself is the only poll that matters.
Oh yay! Those races don’t get enough national attention, it’s a relief to see them get fucked.