That’s interesting, and a little on the nose. The overlap between “knows far too much about statistics and probability to complain about any one outcome” and “does exactly that anyway” is huge, and includes many of the top poker players. (And all of the bad ones.)
3 Likes
6 Likes
Opt outs are not statistically measured on the survey. I would rather sabotage it with bad data.
If calling shenanigans was counted, I would do it frequently.
1 Like
My main issue with the whole poll aggregation process is that it creates narratives that are not proven in actual elections. When the Democratic candidates were up in the summer, the Democrats were doing touchdown dances about staying the course. When the recent polls got released, the Republicans suspected that their inflation-blaming, crime shaming, and trans-targeting rhetoric was working. It created an echo chamber that got a lot on the center-left scolding further left-leaning people about clamming up about corporations gouging consumers, reversing course on criminal justice reform, and outright abandoning equality for members of the LGBTQ community.
It turns out that polling was wrong and the narratives that were born from the polling were BS.
It is like on 2016, Democratic get out the vote operators were reminding previous Obama voters to vote only to discover that many were determined to vote for Donald Trump. This information was relayed to the Clinton campaign who promptly decided that there was a 5-State electoral firewall that could not be beat and that they should stay the campaign course while signaling their intent to work with the Republicans on many things.
Also, just believing the polls depoliticized a lot of potential voters. If Hillary is a lock and you have antipathy for her, why would you want to vote for her. Downballot races were largely ignored. Wisconsin, in spite of Hillary’s claim, was not properly targeted. All of these problems were somewhat the fault of misplaced blame on the truth value of poll aggregation according to 538 and Real Clear Politics.
2 Likes
Is that real? If so, weirdly fascinating. You don’t see a lot about the little tricks he used to rise to power. It’s always just presented as a given that he was going to and thus did.
6 Likes
Its a real image of a ballot paper from the 1938 Anschluss referendum. The text asks the voter to support the ‘‘reunification’’ (Wiedervereinigung) of Austria with the German Reich.
9 Likes
Count on the Nazis to innovate in dark patterns long before the term was coined. Count on the modern GOP to continue in that tradition.
6 Likes
I think the real answer is more sinister. Parties pay for polls strictly to manipulate their bases; to motivate or demotivate groups of voters to participate.
“Hurting turnout” can be the goal, not a problem. The lower the turnout, the more influence your rabid fan base has.
And there are other manipulations, such as cherry picking: pay for a dozen polls, then release the results of only the two or three that they think will influence voters the way they want.
It’s ironic that polls that were supposed to help people participate in democracies have literally become anti-democracy weapons.
2 Likes
Why are people listening to him still?
3 Likes
That’s a statistician thing, and has been for a long time. Models predict. People whose job it is to evaluate the model - the uncertainty, sensitivity, etc - use the prediction to make a forecast.
“Prediction” is a word glittering with promises of arcane knowledge. I like sticking with the word “forecast” because it reminds people of the mundane uncertainty. We’ve all had that picnic or game or trip to the park that got rained out despite the forecast.
3 Likes
I live in a resoundingly D state, and make SURE I vote at every opportunity because I don’t want my state to wander into undemocratic(little d) territory.
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
