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Polling has grown incredibly to be incredibly sophisticated in the 21st century.
I'm too old to keep up with all the meta-data, so I go with my gut. I don't see 2014 as being anything like 2010, so I don't think the GOP is going to gain the Senate after this election, and the House will probably remain safely Republican until 2016. That's usually the way the voters like to limit both parties.
Am I willing to bet on my gut? Nope. I have seen too many elections turn on a dime when big trouble of some kind or other shows up in the closing days, and there's a lot of big trouble drifting around from all directions right now. Anything can happen between now and November in a year like this.
Polling has grown incredibly to be incredibly sophisticated in the 21st century.
I'm too old to keep up with all the meta-data, so I go with my gut. I don't see 2014 as being anything like 2010, so I don't think the GOP is going to gain the Senate after this election, and the House will probably remain safely Republican until 2016. That's usually the way the voters like to limit both parties.
Am I willing to bet on my gut? Nope. I have seen too many elections turn on a dime when big trouble of some kind or other shows up in the closing days, and there's a lot of big trouble drifting around from all directions right now. Anything can happen between now and November in a year like this.
agree, handicapping horse races (my hubby does this and loves it) and handicapping elections, especially today are 2 totally different things. To me, watching polls is just fun, but they are about as accurate as the day they are taken. We are a changing country, new events seem to be happening daily, if not hourly. Most of us, if we are honest, only believe the polls we want to believe.
agree, handicapping horse races (my hubby does this and loves it) and handicapping elections, especially today are 2 totally different things. To me, watching polls is just fun, but they are about as accurate as the day they are taken. We are a changing country, new events seem to be happening daily, if not hourly. Most of us, if we are honest, only believe the polls we want to believe.
Individual pollsare only a snapshot in time, and are only as accurate as the methodology used, but it is amazing to me how accurate the polling aggregators, such as Nate Silver, are. He calculates whatever bias past elections have shown that a particular pollster's methodology is prone to have and plugs that into his calculations and the results are usually spot on. I wonder if he'll be doing as much political polling in 2016 though, since his 538 site is now part of ESPN and he's more involved now in sports statistics, which is where he first gained prominence anyway.
Individual pollsare only a snapshot in time, and are only as accurate as the methodology used, but it is amazing to me how accurate the polling aggregators, such as Nate Silver, are. He calculates whatever bias past elections have shown that a particular pollster's methodology is prone to have and plugs that into his calculations and the results are usually spot on. I wonder if he'll be doing as much political polling in 2016 though, since his 538 site is now part of ESPN and he's more involved now in sports statistics, which is where he first gained prominence anyway.
Apparently according to my husband he has always been very involved in sports handicapping. He did do a hell of a good job predicting the 2012 outcome. Is he gifted in the field, who really knows, but he is a little different from the basic polls which is being discussed here.
Apparently according to my husband he has always been very involved in sports handicapping. He did do a hell of a good job predicting the 2012 outcome. Is he gifted in the field, who really knows, but he is a little different from the basic polls which is being discussed here.
The aggregators are so interesting to read because they help give the rest of us an inside look at which polls are likely to be more reliable and why. And the really interesting thing is that you can't claim that one pollster is consistently more reliable than another.
On the one hand, it's true that the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day. On the other hand, polls shape both the content and the form of our policy discussions, so polling is critically important.
I read a science fiction story once about an election day where the nation's eyes were glued to that election's single voter. Because polling/statistics had gotten so good, each election a single voter was chosen as the most representative of the entire electorate, and that person was the only one who voted.
Apparently according to my husband he has always been very involved in sports handicapping. He did do a hell of a good job predicting the 2012 outcome. Is he gifted in the field, who really knows, but he is a little different from the basic polls which is being discussed here.
Fact of the matter is while some pollsters certainly have a better track record than others, even the strongest pollsters will have polls that just happen to be off. It's the nature of statistics. That is why I think it is always important to look at the overall consensus of polling, which is something Silver generally does. The further out you are the harder it is to predict. First off things can obviously change, the longer the distance to Election Day the chances of changing are more significant than the closer you are in. Secondly, you have far more polls as you get closer to election day than when you are further out. Much easier to come to a consensus when you have six polls within a two week period and looking at the general average of those polls compared to having one or two polls every few weeks.
My favorite doo doo polling was the exit polling done as people left the polls after the 2004 elections and said Kerry had it in the bag. The TV news people wound up with egg on their faces for relying on it.
"Interviewing for the 2004 exit polls was the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections as procedural problems compounded by the refusal of large numbers of Republican voters to be surveyed led to inflated estimates of support for John F. Kerry, according to a report released yesterday by the research firms responsible for the flawed surveys."
In the words of Walter, in ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's act, "Dumbasses."
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