this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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politics

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[–] FlyingSquid 48 points 1 year ago (28 children)

I'm not super trusting of polls anymore, especially because they're usually done by telephone. However-

The poll had a sample of 1,032 adults, age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for all respondents.

This makes me a little more trusting despite that whopping MoE. It sounds like bad news for Trump overall.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (12 children)

I have a related degree. The reason people distrust polls, is because the media frequently misreports or misrepresents them.

Eg. aggregated polling from the 2016 suggested Trump had a 1/3 chance of winning. If you believed some media coverage every poll said Clinton was certain to win. That was how the media reported on the polling, not the polling itself. Invariably Trump winning in 2016 was within the margin of error.

that whopping MoE

Not a large margin of error. You're extrapolating from 1000 people to 300 million. It's astonishing it's that low if you think about it.

because they’re usually done by telephone

Not that common anymore. Often they'll do a a telephone poll then supplement it with online or other methods. Here's IPSOS's article about this poll:

The study was conducted online in English. The data for the total sample were weighted to adjust for gender by age, race/ethnicity, education, Census region, metropolitan status, household income, and political party affiliation. The demographic benchmarks came from the 2022 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). Party ID benchmarks are from recent ABC News/Washington Post telephone polls.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/politico-indictment-august-2023

[–] CoggyMcFee 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I remember reading 538 leading up to the 2016 election, and hearing them say repeatedly that if Trump has a 1 in 4 chance (or whatever amount) of winning the election, not only is it possible for Trump to win, but in fact it means you actually expect it to happen in 1 out of 4 times.

[–] Asifall 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah I remember this too. I think the problem is that people simply don’t understand statistics and don’t realize a 70% chance of winning is totally different from getting 70% of the vote. I like what 538 has been doing in recent years by presenting odds rather than percentages, but people like echo chambers that confirm their biases so idk if this “polls don’t work” narrative is going to go away any time soon.

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