PEW
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FIVETHIRTYEIGHT
Overestimating or underestimating how a candidate will perform on polls make a huge difference. All polls have a winning side unless it is a dead even tie which is unlikely a lot of the time. When pollster’s say that their candidate will perform one way, and are incorrect there are countless other polls that have different estimations that cancel each other out. A big thing pollster’s missed was the amount of support Donald Trump had behind him and how fed up with politician’s the population is.
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(Clearly showing Hillary winning)
What I would change?
If I were conducting a poll about how an election would turn out things would be a little different. I would try to minimize push polling and ask questions about important hot topic’s and then after they responded I would lay out both sides of that topic and each sides views on it. Polls are important because they give you a glimpse of what voters minds are made up about. If candidate A said something on television about candidate B, or if candidate A takes a particularly strong stance on a topic lots of voters will not wait until the end. Early voting was a big thing this year along with absentee voting.
Analyzing Polls
I think polls limitation’s are exactly what we saw happen in this election. You can have a strong “trend” and think you have the election won (See .Gif below). Does this mean our votes don’t matter? Obviously not, everyone who can vote can make a difference. Polls are polls for a reason, they’re estimations and should not be taken as the truth. That may be the biggest problem for people. Everyone wants to think that if the poll says it, it must be true. But are the powers that be that put Trump in office really the late “shy trump” voters, or was there more at play here. We will never know, all we can know is we have a former television star as our President and things are pretty much ass backwards right now.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/
http://www.people-press.org/2016/11/21/low-marks-for-major-players-in-2016-election-including-the-winner/
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37450661
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/why-2016-election-polls-missed-their-mark/
I really liked when you pointed out in the Fivethirtyeight section that pollster's missed the amount of support Trump had behind him. Throughout the campaign it was really hard to tell Trump had any support at all, since most news stories about Trump covered whatever outrageous thing he said that week. Along with that, your analysis on polls is spot on. I especially liked the phrase "polls are polls for a reason". Many times Americans get so caught up in the numbers that they forget they are just numbers.
ReplyDeleteI liked the way you categorized your blog by website. It made it clear what your findings were on each site. I like that you pointed out with what outlets people use to put their input toward polls. It is important to consider the way people have access to participating in polling. I also enjoy that you advocate for voting because even thought this last election was a little discouraging, our votes do still make a difference.
ReplyDeleteI think you made some really good points abut polls being an estimation not a certainty. I also thought the way you organized this blog made it very easy to go through it analytically. However I disagree with your argument that push polling had an effect on these polls. Push polls maybe would effect a more bias outlet poll, but around 90% polls including Fox news had a Clinton victory.
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