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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."
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @09:24AM
the next greatest fashion
We could do worse than have someone in charge who has given life to a human.
Hell, we have--many times.
I saw a thing the other day that said Carly has zero chance of getting the top spot on that ticket--but that you shouldn't bet against her being offered the VP slot.
It's great that this came up today.
Jill Stein, MD [abetterworld.tv] just announced her candidacy [democracynow.org] for the Green Party ticket.
I remember when The Working Class was gathered around the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin in the dead of winter trying to get the Reactionaries not to sell them down the river.
Jill Stein put on her heavy coat and joined them. [worldwidehippies.com]
Obama never showed.
I remember when the people of Philadelphia were protesting unfair FannieMae home repossessions.
Jill Stein showed up, joined the protest, and got arrested. [cloudfront.net]
No politician from the Big 2 ever showed up.
I remember reading about how when she debated Mitt Romney in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, The Boston Globe described her as "the only adult in the room". [google.com]
To get an idea of her politics, look at who all makes up her Green Shadow Cabinet. [greenshadowcabinet.us]
Hey, she couldn't possibly do a WORSE job that the bunch of bozos who have paraded through the Oval Office over the last 3 decades.
-- gewg_