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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: 5, Insightful) by Geezer on Monday June 22 2015, @08:20PM
The one inside the polling place. Please use responsibly.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by GlennC on Monday June 22 2015, @09:01PM
Please use responsibly.
That's right, citizen. Cast your vote, R or D, your choice.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JeffPaetkau on Monday June 22 2015, @11:25PM
Although that is true, the "one inside the polling place" is not entirely disconnected from the so called "horse race" polls. This is particularly true when there are more than 2 options such as here in Canada or in the US when there is a strong independent candidate.
For example, the NDP never had success in either Alberta or Quebec. However, in the last elections (Alberta provincially, Quebec Federally) they did extremely well. Their victories would not have been possible without the polls showing them as being in contention. Without that information voters could only assume that they would be a "wasted vote" as they had always been in the past. Of course that is a self-fulfilling prophesy. The polls showing them doing better than they had historically, snowballed into them doing even better ... and better ... and better ... until they were seen as a legitimate choice.