*Statistically* biased, we mean. A guide to house effects in the Silver Bulletin model.

Edit: had no idea “poll” was such a four letter word, especially when talking about them in the abstract. Anyone want to chime in on the downvotes? Is it just “all polls are bad” or is it Nate Silver? Honestly had no idea talking about poll weighting would be so unpopular.

Since there’s always a lot of interest in the validity of polls, I found this to be interesting. It’s Nate Silver’s explanation of how they do weighting of polls when aggregating based on the pollsters track record. He makes it clear that the bias is often a result of the methodology and not necessarily a “thumb on the scale” and how the pollster executes a poll can introduce bias - and how they account for that.

Many folks have issues with Nate, but he’s at least very transparent in how they account for bias based on previous performance, not just the poll source. So while you may disagree with his decisions, you can at least look at his numbers and know how they got there.

    • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I mean, you can just close the pop up and still read the full article? Or do you see something different?

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Hmm… I could have sworn that the first time I followed the link it went to this page which ends after a few paragraphs with a subscription link. But the page I get now is fine.

        (Edit: I see now that I got to that page from a link in your comments, and mistook that tab for the one I’d opened from the main link.)

        • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          That was the link I gave in the comments about their current analysis based on aggregated polling. If you’re only getting a few paragraphs, I’m guessing you’re using reader view? (I default to it too) Unfortunately a bunch of news-type websites now essentially break reader view and only show a snippet. If you view outside reader, you should be able to see the polling analysis.

    • jeffw@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 months ago

      I was wondering that too. Do we hate Nate silver now? Dude always seemed pretty respected

      • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I was actually excited to share as I hadn’t seen this explained as well before. <shrugs> Live and learn I guess.

  • Krauerking@lemy.lol
    3·
    2 months ago

    Holy moly 170 comments on the article itself and nothing but downvotes over here. Man I wonder what the conversation that didn’t happen was that caused this.

    • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I am just as confused. Most of my /politics posts and comments are relatively well upvoted, but I guess there’s a sizable contingent who just hate any mention of polls at all or have it out for Nate Silver. I was at least expecting a few more comments about how Silver ranked some pollsters and whether folks thought those assessments were accurate. 🤷🏼‍♂️

        • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          In general I don’t think so, and there’s only about one to three accounts that downvote most things I post/comment so I don’t think it’s that. I think I’m leaning towards reactionary downvotes for anything that mentions “polls” - which is a shame, as while I don’t think polls are terribly good at being reliably predictive of the results, I think they’re fairly good when used for tracking changes in momentum and at least more reliable when analyzed in aggregate with competent and rigorous weighting based on past performance. And this article is great about explaining how that’s done by the only folks who’ve been shown to be any good at it.