Author Topic: Polling isn't getting worse  (Read 324 times)

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Offline cybercoma

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Re: Polling isn't getting worse
« on: June 03, 2018, 11:19:55 am »
You nudged me into looking into all the 'projections' and I'm starting to think we are in a fool's paradise when it comes to projections.

Everyone seems to be posting TWO poll trackers, neither of which seem 100% clear to me.  For example, why does the CBC tracker put the chance of an NDP majority high above that of a minority ?  And the other tracker is not done by a statistician.

I am starting to suspect we will see a BIG SURPRISE on election day.

PS: This may be the rebirth of intelligent 'public' discussion I have been waiting for, for 15-20 years or so.  I never suspected that the re-emergence of intelligent public discussion would start with error-prone lone guns and build on that but it makes sense.
The problem with these private firms is that their specific methods and algorithms are proprietary. If you believe in the free market then competition between them means that they all want to have that one magic formula that is the most accurate. They tend to be so.

In any case, all statistical projections are just that. The formula is accurate, it’s just that the formula includes a measure of unaccounted variance. We can never know how big that’s going to be. And as I said earlier, it’s a moving target. Polls are publish and people react to them, which then changes the results as soon as it’s announced. Each poll taken is simply a snapshot in time using the best prediction method available. They try to translate it into riding projections but it’s still fundamentally based on popular vote. Seats are won by popular vote, except on a riding by riding basis, whilst the polling typically contacts about 1200 people across different riding. Why’re pretty good at inferring ridings from that most of the time, but it’s obviously imperfect. Incumbents tend to be sticky, so they account for that. Start power also helps candidates, so they try to account for that. Voter fatigue can play a role, so they also try to account for that. Then there’s demographic composition of the riding and how peopemwith those characteristics usually vote. So there’s a lot they consider.