After 8 years, will we stop the lies about polls

[Alldayallie]

Will we finally stop the lies about polls being dishonest?

 

[Joeinmo]

Will we finally stop the lies about polls being dishonest?

why would you say that?, why are there only 9500 Democrat voters to 190,000 GOP voters? The Dems voted in the GOP caucus to alter the outcome ...

the polls were off about Santorum - by a whole lot

 

[Alldayallie]

why would you say that?, why are there only 9500 Democrat voters to 190,000 GOP voters? The Dems voted in the GOP caucus to alter the outcome ...

the polls were off about Santorum - by a whole lot

Uhh no. Dems report precient delegates, not total votes. They don't do that until later. Two separate processes.

 

[misterx]

Dem turnout is estimated at 195k.

 

[dannno]

I disagree. The polls may have predicted what the Microsoft(tm) App reported to the media, but we don't know if those numbers are accurate. We have huge amounts of students who had said they would vote for Rand who did not, hopefully this will be looked into. Although by no means assume that my entire argument is contingent on the actual outcome.

Polls do a pretty good job at shaping the election and in that sense help to predict the election through self fulfilling prophecy. The more people think a candidate can't win, the less likely they are to vote for them.

What we know is that the polling age demographics were way off. I am convinced this will be proven by voter turnout records. If the demographics were corrected, Rand would have had higher numbers in the polls, which no doubt we can all agree would have been fair to report. This would have led to more people polling and voting for him. So if the polls had said Rand was at 15% in Iowa, would he have gotten closer to 15% in Iowa just from perception? Maybe higher? We don't know the answer to that.

We also know that Ron Paul got over 20% in Iowa in 2012, yet some polls indicated that only 5-10% voted for Ron Paul in Iowa in 2012. How is that a representative composition of likely voters?

You can't argue that the polls were "good", the only thing you can argue is that they to some extent helped shape the perception of electability and happened to closely match the results provided by the Microsoft(tm) app that tallied the votes.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Polls are often wrong, for predictable reasons (which is to say pollsters are dishonest/stupid).

People claiming that polls are wrong often do so for no reason, other than wishful thinking.

So meh.

 

[dannno]

Also, both Rand Paul and Ron Paul claimed in the media that the polls were bad, which as I argued above is completely true despite the fact that it was predictive of the Microsoft(tm) app results. Do you really expect their supporters to take a different position?

 

[puppetmaster]

Will we finally stop the lies about polls being dishonest?

polls drive the votes and steer the electorate

 

[hells_unicorn]

Will we finally stop the lies about polls being dishonest?

The polls were completely off regarding Rubio, to the point of being embarrassing actually. The fact that they were close in predicting Paul's standing, and some of the others is also not a vindication of polling as a legitimate science, given that it is impossible to determine whether the polls actually measure public opinion or simply manipulate it through promoting a herd mentality in voters.

Naturally it isn't just the polls, but also the entire narrative set up by the MSM and even some smaller media outlets. Mob mentality is heavily encouraged when people come to believe that truth is simply what everyone collectively believes.

 

[Crashland]

The 20% of Ron voters went to the same place all of Santorum and Huckabee's voters went. Other candidates. In this case, a combination of Sanders, Cruz and Trump. Probably a ton for Sanders in particular. Remember there was no democratic race in 2012 so all of those enthusiastic and obnoxious anti-establishment young people went to Ron Paul.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

Will we finally stop the lies about polls being dishonest?

Eduardo.. I see youre back... whos paying you now to spread your lies?

 

[CPUd]

I think Eduardo swung to Cruz a few months ago. Such a shame.

 

[unknown]

polls drive the votes and steer the electorate

Not even a question.

And they always cover their asses with some kind of "45% of voters may still change their vote".

Like WTF.

 

[MarkieMark]

Eduardo.. I see youre back... whos paying you now to spread your lies?

Nope, that wasn't me.

I think Eduardo swung to Cruz a few months ago. Such a shame.

Fuck no.

 

[July]

It's not that polls are inherrently always wrong, it's the gerrymandering of which ones are given attention or used as criteria. Things like poritizing polls over actual voting results when it benefits a slate of candidates, or vise versa. Or using polls to narrow down the field ahead of time, such as we saw with the undercard debate.

They may have had different reasons, but it was kinda obvious both the media and RNC felt voters had too many choices this year in the Republican field.

They also create problems in a close race when the media jumps the gun and declares winners before the votes have been cast and counted, as we have seen.

My feelings about polls have nothing to do with Ron or Rand Paul. I lost faith in them as reliable way back during the whole Bush/Gore hanging chad mess.

I understand people like polls because it makes it seem like there is a national mass democratic consensus on an issue or candidate, but that really isn't the case. It undermines the concept of "one person, one vote" and disenfranchises those who are never polled, which is not very democratic at all.

 

[jkob]

Polls aren't honest or dishonest, it's the people administrating them and you can basically get them to say what you want most of the time. There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of polls but if every poll is showing you with 4% then you probably have 4%.

 

[Lovecraftian4Paul]

I think a lot of people were coming around to the idea of polls being accurate after Ron's run last time. But there was a resurgence in denial with Rand being so low coming up to Iowa. Thinking the polls could be wrong was the only way to keep a shred of hope that he'd finish anywhere above 5%. Same with the supposed mass student turnout.

 

[Umad]

No this board has too many loons.

 

[Todd]

polls drive the votes and steer the electorate

^ What he said.

OP needs to look into it more I guess.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

Will we finally stop the lies about polls being dishonest?

I used to work at the Harris Poll as an interviewer, I know they are dishonest from the inside. For example, at times I pointed out to supervision that the wording of some questions were clearly more Democratic-leaning than Republican-friendly. The wording never got revised. The intent on steering those surveyed, based on the wording or sequencing of questions, is a reality of modern polling. And what about most of the dozens of primary polls done across 2007 not including Ron Paul's name among the list of candidate options?? How could nearly all the pollsters have done this, at the behest of their media sponsors, without being dishonest?

Tilted sampling or weighting of the poll population is another common trick. In general, if you want to get a more pro-government or establishment driven result, oversample adults over 50. This trick was used most recently, of course, on Rand Paul, as the polls kept under-representing voters under 50, which largely contributed to stopping his momentum by keeping him in the single digits for six months straight. For the entire polling industry to have done this, means their MSM sponsors had to have given them the same unbalanced sampling guidelines.