QuiteWhittle
Member
Thanks! Needed that link to quell some Facebook diablosing.
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PoliGAF 2016 |OT5| Archdemon Hillary Clinton vs. Lice Traffic Jam
- Thread starter Spoiled Milk
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Thanks! Needed that link to quell some Facebook diablosing.
No TV ads when you need a landslide to have a hope is a bold move.
No wait it's just stupid.
Okay, this thread is not going to be the place to unskew polls.
It is not too weird to see occasional polls that show Trump near or ahead Clinton. Polls are not exact! That does not mean that every poll that shows them close has "sampling problems" or is "unreliable." Literally those are the arguments Dean Chambers made for why Romney would beat Obama.
The relevant figure is the polling average, which shows Clinton ahead even at the point in time when it's most likely Trump would be overperforming (oppo hasn't started, Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee but Clinton is still battling it out). If it stops doing that I would probably go ahead and get worried. (The other time I would expect Trump to overperform is immediately after the GOP convention.)
But please don't bring polls to this thread to ask why we shouldn't believe them. The polls that show results we like have exactly the same problems as the polls that show results we don't like, we just only look for problems with the ones we don't like.
It is not too weird to see occasional polls that show Trump near or ahead Clinton. Polls are not exact! That does not mean that every poll that shows them close has "sampling problems" or is "unreliable." Literally those are the arguments Dean Chambers made for why Romney would beat Obama.
The relevant figure is the polling average, which shows Clinton ahead even at the point in time when it's most likely Trump would be overperforming (oppo hasn't started, Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee but Clinton is still battling it out). If it stops doing that I would probably go ahead and get worried. (The other time I would expect Trump to overperform is immediately after the GOP convention.)
But please don't bring polls to this thread to ask why we shouldn't believe them. The polls that show results we like have exactly the same problems as the polls that show results we don't like, we just only look for problems with the ones we don't like.
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
Gravis is especially bad though.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Yeah I'm not saying we should start unskewing (i.e. "It's Gravis so +5 to Clinton") but if a polling outfit is bad they should be disregarded.
I mean come on they were off by nearly 100 points in that one poll.
Rasmussen similarly blew it with a state race in Hawaii in 2010 (they were off by over 50 points) but everyone still takes them seriously for some reason (narrative).
gutter_trash
Banned
Jack Remington
Banned
Yeah, no.
Hillary "defenders" (a more accurate term would be people who know what they're talking about, or people with even a modicum of perspective) are not the ones shitting out misinformation daily.
Voysa Reezun
Banned
I think that looking at crosstabs and correlating those crosstabs to trends/common sense should be relevant enough, though, right?
I mean, any poll with crosstabs that have Trump winning Latino/a folks 55-45 isn't being "unskewed" via criticism of that number. That is a legitimate criticism to make of the poll.
I mean, any poll with crosstabs that have Trump winning Latino/a folks 55-45 isn't being "unskewed" via criticism of that number. That is a legitimate criticism to make of the poll.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
Aaron Strife
Banned
Oh right, he initially said people should be able to use whatever bathroom that they wanted (and invited Caitlyn Jenner to use the women's room in Trump Tower) then later said the states should decide.
Macho Madness
Member
The broader point pigeon is making is fine but there are particular polls that are naturally less accurate by either bad modeling or methodology. Gravis is one, ARG another.
Then there's the daily tracking polls that seem to only vary based on who answered the poll that day.
Then there's the daily tracking polls that seem to only vary based on who answered the poll that day.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Oh so he's flip-flopped.
But I mean, guys, Trump isn't that bad. He's probably just lying about every single policy issue he's proposed. Even the ones where he's taken every side.
Cynical and reductionist in the extreme.
That man inherited a damn mess when it comes to the middle east. Once we're committed, we're already committed. Because if we just take our ball and go home, there will be terrible consequences. That is a certainty. Yes, some of his policies have resulted in unfortunate deaths, but he's been one of the few dissenting voices when it comes to military intervention in the upper echelons of our country. And for that matter, bombing runs result in collateral damage, boots on ground result in collateral damage. Taking action has unintended consequences. We should always be striving to eliminate them and we definitely haven't done enough yet, but we can't just do nothing. He extended the olive branch to Iran. He's fucking trying, man. He's literally attempting to solve for every problem on earth at the same time.
Like, you're not even wrong about this, but to be like, "Yeah, he's saving the world, but is he saving it all at once?" That's a little shitty. I'm not saying don't criticize him, but maybe just...cut him a little slack. The world is measurably a better place because Barack Obama was our president for eight years. That's not for nothing.
nature boy
Member
Spoiled Milk
Banned
Aren't you posting Gravis polls all the time?
Probably posted already, but I didn't see it in my browsing in the last two days:
New Super Deluxe video - Glenn Beck Does His Best Trump Impression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7O26NYXGYM
It's the Cheetos face dipping video with lots of air horn in the background music.
New Super Deluxe video - Glenn Beck Does His Best Trump Impression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7O26NYXGYM
It's the Cheetos face dipping video with lots of air horn in the background music.
I mean, kind of?
I feel like the train of argument for that conversation basically goes:
1. The poll says Latinos will go for Trump 55-45.
2. I don't think they will.
3. Therefore I don't believe the poll is accurate.
So that's not a bad argument as far as it goes, but it is not really evidence. Point 2 there is just faith in your model of the universe. I think it's fine to say "I don't buy this," but it is probably wrong to jump to "poll had bad sampling/was run poorly/company can't be trusted" or whatever. Polling is not an exact science. Five percent of the time you're going to be two standard deviations away from the mean.
Another way of thinking about this is, if another five polls came out over the next week that all said Latinos would vote for Trump by a few points, would that change your perspective? Because it probably should. And that means the first poll probably should register as a data point too. It's not proof on its own, and future data points may put it outside the trendline, but it's not correct to immediately work on explaining it away.
edit: I do think that Gravis is pretty bad since I'm the one who got a Facebook ad asking me if I wanted to participate in a Gravis poll. But I'm happy to wait for Nate to work on reliability rankings for this year. I don't have evidence yet.
Aren't MSNBC videos unwatchable in Canada? Or maybe I'm thinking of NBC videos.
Box of Kittens
Banned
Even the use of red and blue as the colors wasn't standard until the 80s. ABC used blue (Carter) and yellow (Ford) in their 1976 coverage. But it does tend to be confusing to outside viewers when the Republicans are in socialist red and the Democrats are in royal blue.
Orbis Tabula
Member
I can kind of agree. I'd much rather the response to bad polls be "look at the aggregate" rather than "look at the crosstabs." It's not that polls can't be done poorly, it's just sort of a path I don't trust myself not to follow to my doom. I'd rather have an accurate picture of what happens, even if Trump pulls ahead somehow, and I think that relying on the aggregate would do that, while trying to find flaws in polls I don't believe is more dangerous. I mean, I guess that's just personal preference.
And, I mean, if you find a poll and you don't think it's any good, why even bother posting it?
And, I mean, if you find a poll and you don't think it's any good, why even bother posting it?
Macho Madness
Member
I mean probably. Doesn't mean it's not worth scrutiny.
Retromelon
Member
Our government has decided it's ok to kill a ton of innocent people to nail a handful of terrorists. You can disagree, and tell me I'm wrong. If I am, I will change my views, because I care about the truth and what is right and wrong. But don't tell me to tone down my criticism. All the good Obama does is not an excuse for the bad.
Tell it to the dads that lost their daughters and sons, dog
Voysa Reezun
Banned
I think that regarding the example of Latino voters, all other evidence, both quantitative and qualitative (favorability ratings, amount of Latinos and Latinas in the crowds that protest Trump rallies, etc.) make criticizing this aspect of the Gravis poll something beyond gut instinct. If I didn't have that other evidence, I'd ask the question "Why?" before I started to criticize, and if there were eight more polls that showed a trend where Latino folks were voting Trump over Hillary, I'd switch from criticism to asking why this trend seems to be happening.
But looking at crosstabs and criticizing them, as long as that criticism has a base in other information, seems fine to me. If a poll adjusts its samples of, say, white voters to have a greater influence than what is indicated by looking at the data-backed decline of the share of white voters over the past twelve years, that's worth questioning. Maybe we don't want to question the pollster itself, necessarily, but we can tear apart a poll without being delusional about it as the "Unskewed" types were with their arguments about silent majorities of voters that they couldn't actually prove existedd.
Then again, I think we basically agree and that I'm essentially talking past your point anyway with this post.
Macho Madness
Member
You can scrutinize polls that show huge outliers in crosstabs. That's done all the time. It's important though to look at the sample and the margin of error with that sample. And then try and see if it makes sense by looking at other polls.
Spoiled Milk
Banned
It isn't worth scrutiny. Why post bad polls when you know they're bad? It just freaks people out or it starts an unnecessary trend of hypercriticizing polls the informed know are already bad and the uninformed have no stake in.
+1 to my homeboyz EskimoJoe and Pigeon
T
thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
Same thing happened with minimum wage and it's the same states rights strategy Jeb Bush and John Kasich and any other so called moderate republican does for these things.
Only thing that makes him different is he's more likely to publically support the more leftward position as something the states should do, but in practice that still means absolutely nothing.
Macho Madness
Member
Because I feel like it's interesting to know what some pollsters are picking up even if it's junk. I don't care if people misinterpret it, that's going to happen anyway.
I won't tell you you're wrong because I don't think you are wrong. But just as the good does not excuse the bad, the bad absolutely does not eclipse the good. This has been, by my estimation at least, the best presidency we've ever had in the modern era. Sometimes, it's ok to celebrate that a little I think. We can't just focus on our shortcomings all the time, just like we absolutely can't waste all our time patting ourselves on the back when the job is not done. It's a balance as I see it.
And I'm sorry the way I worded that made it sounded like I wanted you to moderate your discourse. I shouldn't have said that. You be you, man. I just got too riled up as I was writing.
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
Eh. We can curate the news here a bit, it's OK.
Spoiled Milk
Banned
Nacho sadness
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Groucho Antics
Gazpacho practice
Groucho Antics
Macho Madness
Member
I didn't post the Gravis poll today despite seeing it an hour before it was. I'm not going to be posting many polls for the general election anyway. Going to be too much noise.
HUELEN10
Member
I am so angry about transgender issues being used like this. I freaking BETTER see some of the bigger LGBT rights groups actually acknowledge the "T" part of the acronym and stand the fuck up. I am literally DONE with the community only caring about the "G" and "B" part. Hell, we ignore the L part because "lesbians are weird."
Yeah, no argument from me here, I've been put down by privileged queers myself, so I completely understand where you are coming from. Privileged queers? You just gotta say it out loud to realize how fucked up the concept is, yet non-privileged queers still get the shaft. The queer community needs to be more inclusive and stand the fuck up to these things through unity.
gutter_trash
Banned
for some reason, their clips on their news sites work but not SNL
Box of Kittens
Banned
I guess I'll go ahead and give my view on the polling thing.
The first thing is that I think it's bad to take a poll that says something you don't like and then look for reasons to discount it. It's especially dangerous to come up with reasons to say the poll shows something other than the toplines, whether that's giving undecideds to Kerry in 2004, or saying Romney has to be winning because he's leading among independents in 2012. It's such a common trap for partisans to fall into and one of those things to be actively guarding against. In general I make a conscious effort to apply extra scrutiny to information that confirms my pre-existing beliefs. I have to because I know that subconsciously I'm doing the opposite!
That having been said, I don't have a problem with pointing out that certain pollsters (Gravis, ARG) are notoriously unreliable. You certainly shouldn't be taking too much stock in their polls, but of course you shouldn't be taking too much stock in any one poll, even if it's from a very good pollster (say, Selzer). You should always be looking at aggregates. How to handle "bad" polls in an aggregate is, of course, a tricky question. I tend to prefer 538's approach (give greater weight to "good" polls, only outright throw away a poll if you have a serious concern such as fabricating data) to RCP's (throwing out polls for what can seem like arbitrary reasons) but in any case I don't like the idea of throwing out a poll because you don't believe the result.
The first thing is that I think it's bad to take a poll that says something you don't like and then look for reasons to discount it. It's especially dangerous to come up with reasons to say the poll shows something other than the toplines, whether that's giving undecideds to Kerry in 2004, or saying Romney has to be winning because he's leading among independents in 2012. It's such a common trap for partisans to fall into and one of those things to be actively guarding against. In general I make a conscious effort to apply extra scrutiny to information that confirms my pre-existing beliefs. I have to because I know that subconsciously I'm doing the opposite!
That having been said, I don't have a problem with pointing out that certain pollsters (Gravis, ARG) are notoriously unreliable. You certainly shouldn't be taking too much stock in their polls, but of course you shouldn't be taking too much stock in any one poll, even if it's from a very good pollster (say, Selzer). You should always be looking at aggregates. How to handle "bad" polls in an aggregate is, of course, a tricky question. I tend to prefer 538's approach (give greater weight to "good" polls, only outright throw away a poll if you have a serious concern such as fabricating data) to RCP's (throwing out polls for what can seem like arbitrary reasons) but in any case I don't like the idea of throwing out a poll because you don't believe the result.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
My view on polls.
If you have one poll that is a major outlier and seems fishy, it probably is. If you start having a bunch of other polls following the same pattern then there is obviously some truth to it.
I like to look at the major trends rather than a single poll that basically goes against all current notions and political logic.
but thats just me
If you have one poll that is a major outlier and seems fishy, it probably is. If you start having a bunch of other polls following the same pattern then there is obviously some truth to it.
I like to look at the major trends rather than a single poll that basically goes against all current notions and political logic.
but thats just me
Jack Remington
Banned
It could totally happen. Just need a wipeout of sufficient size.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
I mean, lots of things could happen.
But I wouldn't waste even thinking about it till way closer to election day, Senate is the realistic chance and the one to actually think about.
Spoiled Milk
Banned
My view on polls.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
you guys are starting to make me like poles, so much I might just want to see people do stuff with them like dance
Don't we all Holmes? Who among us doesn't dream of being satisfied by some beautiful polls every now and then.
Box of Kittens
Banned
Also, I do think that, in general, there is a difference between criticizing an individual poll and trying to handwave away the aggregate. At its heart, Unskewed Polls was doing the latter by saying that nearly every poll was oversampling Democrats. Of course we're talking about a website run by a person who thought you could apply some partisan and ideological weights to a web survey and the result would be equivalent to a scientific poll. But even the milder versions of unskewing are doing the same thing, i.e., arguing why the aggregate is wrong. Arguing that Kerry was actually ahead because the undecideds would break for him or that Romney was actually ahead because he led among independents (or that you couldn't take the polling average at face value because of a claim that the polling results follow a bimodal distribution) are all alike in ways that saying "Gravis sucks, look at their track record" is not.
I am a little wary of trying to use crosstabs to discredit a poll, however. You should always keep in mind that the margin of error on subsamples can be quite large and we should expect some polls to show results out side the margin of error. I think there's plenty to criticize Gravis for before you start down what is ultimately a pretty dangerous path.
I am a little wary of trying to use crosstabs to discredit a poll, however. You should always keep in mind that the margin of error on subsamples can be quite large and we should expect some polls to show results out side the margin of error. I think there's plenty to criticize Gravis for before you start down what is ultimately a pretty dangerous path.
Has anyone posted this?
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/279842-trump-adviser-pushes-him-to-back-carbon-tax
Basically, Trump's energy advisor is trying to get him to back a carbon tax, not because he believes global warming is man made, but because Trump is a populist and the country wants something to be done on climate change.
It would be incredible if Trump could get the GOP go move left on climate change. I would be eternally grateful to Trump (lolwut) if he gets the GOP to agree to a carbon tax.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/279842-trump-adviser-pushes-him-to-back-carbon-tax
Basically, Trump's energy advisor is trying to get him to back a carbon tax, not because he believes global warming is man made, but because Trump is a populist and the country wants something to be done on climate change.
It would be incredible if Trump could get the GOP go move left on climate change. I would be eternally grateful to Trump (lolwut) if he gets the GOP to agree to a carbon tax.
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