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Chichiri

(4,667 posts)
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 03:02 PM Mar 2016

Guess what. WaPo pointed out that exactly the same thing happened in South Carolina.


It's worth noting that, while this was a big miss, it's not that unusual. Primary polling is often somewhat hit-or-miss, as most people understand. But this is also a function of the amount of attention being paid to this particular race. Had Clinton been expected to win and gone on to win by a much larger margin, had it not been primetime on a weekday, we might not have noticed.

You don't think so? Well, the polling in South Carolina was exactly that. It missed by 20 points versus the Real Clear Politics average on that Saturday, underestimating Clinton's massive win in the Palmetto State.

(...)

The other reason we're so focused on Michigan, of course, is that Clinton was supposed to win big but lost. Clinton should have had a big win and taken a big step toward the nomination. She didn't, and the polls didn't catch it. We very naturally don't care that Clinton's South Carolina blow-out was a mega-blowout. We do care that we didn't know who'd win a state.


The moral of the story: act like all polls have us five points behind. Act accordingly.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/grassroots/make-calls/
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Guess what. WaPo pointed out that exactly the same thing happened in South Carolina. (Original Post) Chichiri Mar 2016 OP
If the pollsters don't get it right... yallerdawg Mar 2016 #1

yallerdawg

(16,104 posts)
1. If the pollsters don't get it right...
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 03:25 PM
Mar 2016

they go out of business.

Gallup got it wrong in 2012, and gave it up entirely.

From Time article:

When it comes to election polling, it’s the best of times and the worst of times.

On the positive side, there is more polling than ever from private universities, news media and small independent shops. Sites like HuffPost Pollster, RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight also provide sophisticated analysis of what the polls mean.

On the negative side, the glut of polls often doesn’t add up to much, while problems with getting accurate results are starting to hurt the polling industry’s reputation.

Accuracy is a real dilemma.

Maybe we should start expecting margin of error + or - 20 points?

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