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posted by janrinok on Monday June 22 2015, @08:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the little-more-than-guesswork dept.

Cliff Zukin writes in the NY Times that those paying close attention to the 2016 election should exercise caution as they read the polls because election polling is in near crisis as statisticians say polls are becoming less reliable. According to Zukin, two trends are driving the increasing unreliability of election and other polling in the United States: the growth of cellphones and the decline in people willing to answer surveys. Coupled, they have made high-quality research much more expensive to do, so there is less of it. This has opened the door for less scientifically based, less well-tested techniques. To top it off, a perennial election polling problem, how to identify “likely voters,” has become even thornier. Today, a majority of people are difficult or impossible to reach on landline phones. One problem is that the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act has been interpreted by the Federal Communications Commission to prohibit the calling of cellphones through automatic dialers, in which calls are passed to live interviewers only after a person picks up the phone. To complete a 1,000-person survey, it’s not unusual to have to dial more than 20,000 random numbers, most of which do not go to actual working telephone numbers.

The second unsettling trend are rapidly declining response rates, reaching levels once considered unimaginable. In the late 1970s, pollsters considered an 80 percent response rate acceptable but by 2014 the response rate has fallen to 8 percent. "Our old paradigm has broken down, and we haven’t figured out how to replace it," concludes Zukin. "In short, polls and pollsters are going to be less reliable. We may not even know when we’re off base. What this means for 2016 is anybody’s guess."


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  • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday June 22 2015, @08:56PM

    by Zz9zZ (1348) on Monday June 22 2015, @08:56PM (#199582)

    I never saw the point of election polling. The only effect I can imagine is to get better ratings, or more with more tinfoil hat: shift public opinion. What possible benefit can these polls provide for the actual voter?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 22 2015, @09:37PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday June 22 2015, @09:37PM (#199606) Journal

    Election polling is part of the "circenses" half of "Panem et circenses." The horse race is the central dynamic of the election spectacle, which means you need a system for score-keeping to keep the leaderboard going. The other crucial aspect of the election spectacle is maintaining the illusion of choice and legitimacy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact being negotiated in total secrecy has been doing a lot of damage to the former. The Citizens United decision has quite undermined the latter. To me, the real test of this presidential election is whether the most partisan and motivated citizens will continue to accept the legitimacy of the process. Reading the activist progressive and conservative blogs, it seems there is some question about that.

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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:44PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:44PM (#199874) Journal

    What possible benefit can these polls provide for the actual voter?

    They *could* be used to make people less afraid of voting for a third party...

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:49PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:49PM (#199972) Journal

      Or fake the third party to be insignificant small in number of votes and thus a wasted vote to avoid. So keeping the polls out of the election could actually benefit democracy.

      (Otoh it seems then like a choice between three ways to waste a vote)

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:27PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:27PM (#199993) Journal

        Or fake the third party to be insignificant small in number of votes and thus a wasted vote to avoid.

        The election itself already has that effect. But in opinion polls there's no real incentive to do the whole "lesser evil" crap.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:48PM (#199936)

    If your favourite candidate comes out ahead, you can feel like a winner, while if he doesn't, you can complain about the dumb people who don't understand that your favourite candidate is the right one.