Sunday, October 23
Article in the Daily Trojan. They report that the NYT and other national news outlets are criticizing their poll about how they're improperly skewing it in favor of Trump.

Quote:The poll, which was first published in July, predicts a victory for Republican nominee Donald Trump by 44.4 percent over Clinton’s 44.1 percent. However, the poll has recently come under fire from public figures, other pollsters and national news outlets — most notably The New York Times — for its methods, which critics say have skewed the data in favor of Trump.

They go on to defend their methodology.

http://dailytrojan.com/2016/10/23/uscla-...y-methods/

Monday, October 24
Clinton soars 1.6% in the USC Daybreak, a 7-day rolling average poll -- meaning they poll 1/7th of their sample daily. So for a 1.6% change to occur in one day, it would have required a 15% swing in the last 1/7th sampled, on no newsworthy events whatsoever. Highly unlikely, if not impossible.

The USC Poll is a hot mess. It starts from a very unorthodox weighting mechanism. That, combined with its' outlier status, has resulted in questions. It also uses the same sample of poll responders. If they got a bad original sample, and I think they did, that bad sample will continue throughout the process.

And who is in that video? Is he some sort of mathematician or statistician?

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That being said, if the poll was being weighed incorrectly towards Trump due to the weighting mechanism (where HRC supporters didn't assign probabilities that they'll vote in equal measure to DJT supporters), and now it turns out that the HRC voters actually are voting...that some of that pro-Trump bias is evaporating. As it should as election day approaches. Everyone will be voting. And will be voting for either DJT or HRC. The massive change in the poll shows that the HRC voters voted, while they'd be assigning a 70% probability to voting, and they weren't moving up their 'likelihood' percentage up rate ably during the Fall. It just went up - all in one go - on one day when early voting started/approached.

(10-25-2016 12:06 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  The USC Poll is a hot mess. It starts from a very unorthodox weighting mechanism. That, combined with its' outlier status, has resulted in questions. It also uses the same sample of poll responders. If they got a bad original sample, and I think they did, that bad sample will continue throughout the process.

And who is in that video? Is he some sort of mathematician or statistician?

----

That being said, if the poll was being weighed incorrectly towards Trump due to the weighting mechanism (where HRC supporters didn't assign probabilities that they'll vote in equal measure to DJT supporters), and now it turns out that the HRC voters actually are voting...that some of that pro-Trump bias is evaporating. As it should as election day approaches. Everyone will be voting. And will be voting for either DJT or HRC. The massive change in the poll shows that the HRC voters voted, while they'd be assigning a 70% probability to voting, and they weren't moving up their 'likelihood' percentage up rate ably during the Fall. It just went up - all in one go - on one day when early voting started/approached.

Oh, of Course ! Because the liberal/Clinton think tank says so !

Muh Nate!

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BUT MUH LA TIMES POLL!

Much has been made of the LA Times poll's methodology, like a 19 year old black man who likes Trump speaking for his entire demographic, but perhaps the biggest flaw is taking people at their word re how they voted in 2012. People misremember and/or lie about voting for the loser in elections after the fact, and so weighing for that makes Romney-- and Trump-- voters greatly overrepresented. This is why good pollsters only control for immutable traits like age and race. Sam Wang of Princeton University shows how their poll would look like absent this weighing, which actually makes it track the RCP average closely--

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/10/19...imes-poll/

(10-25-2016 05:20 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  Muh Nate!

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MUH BACK,

MUH POLLS,

AND MY CRACK.

(10-25-2016 10:37 AM)TechRocks Wrote:  

(10-25-2016 12:06 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  The USC Poll is a hot mess. It starts from a very unorthodox weighting mechanism. That, combined with its' outlier status, has resulted in questions. It also uses the same sample of poll responders. If they got a bad original sample, and I think they did, that bad sample will continue throughout the process.

And who is in that video? Is he some sort of mathematician or statistician?

----

That being said, if the poll was being weighed incorrectly towards Trump due to the weighting mechanism (where HRC supporters didn't assign probabilities that they'll vote in equal measure to DJT supporters), and now it turns out that the HRC voters actually are voting...that some of that pro-Trump bias is evaporating. As it should as election day approaches. Everyone will be voting. And will be voting for either DJT or HRC. The massive change in the poll shows that the HRC voters voted, while they'd be assigning a 70% probability to voting, and they weren't moving up their 'likelihood' percentage up rate ably during the Fall. It just went up - all in one go - on one day when early voting started/approached.

You seem to be an expert in everything.

I'm not an expert on polling, but I've been around enough of it to be conversant in it. I consider myself very competent in statistics and statistical analysis.

There are polls that concern me. This isn't one of them.

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I'm not a big fan of tracking polls. They tend to confirm any bias that was present in the original sample. And the USC poll doesn't appear to control for it all. As a result, you end up with fat tail events. The ABC tracking poll showing HRC up by 12 is probably on the other tail.

There's a reason why groups that are in the business of getting polling right (Real Clear Politics, and the other firms) go to a 'poll of polls' in order to increase the likelihood of getting a good result as the inherent errors in any individual poll will be mitigated by the other polls.

Polling firms are divided into three categories

1) Reputational polling groups - These groups earn money by getting it right. They get to sell their services to more people, at higher prices in the next cycle based upon their historical performance. They have every motivation to get it right. This would also include Real Clear Politics, which gets the vast majority of its web traffic from its polling features. Also groups like CNN, which markets itself as a straight news site. By the way, I think CNN probably has the best polling - and it shows HRC up by 5-6.

2) Bespoke polling groups - These groups create polls for specific purposes, such as to provide an underdog with a poll that they can use to gin up donations, create clickbait/contrarian poll stories, etc. Gravis and Civitas would be two on the right. PPP, SurveyUSA,IBD and Rasmussen are a mix between 1 and 2. When a poll comes out from any of them, I usually wait to find confirmation from another poll.

3) Academic polling groups - Usually these can be classified in group 1. But sometimes, these can be more of the inquisitive - 'hey lets do some research and try to find something new' type polls. The USC poll, with its unorthodox methodology appears to be one of these types of polls.

Russian rigged polls.

Putin!

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(10-25-2016 10:33 AM)Max Power Wrote:  BUT MUH LA TIMES POLL!

Much has been made of the LA Times poll's methodology, like a 19 year old black man who likes Trump speaking for his entire demographic, but perhaps the biggest flaw is taking people at their word re how they voted in 2012. People misremember and/or lie about voting for the loser in elections after the fact, and so weighing for that makes Romney-- and Trump-- voters greatly overrepresented. This is why good pollsters only control for immutable traits like age and race. Sam Wang of Princeton University shows how their poll would look like absent this weighing, which actually makes it track the RCP average closely--

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/10/19...imes-poll/

Hahahahah. "The poll isn't skewing left enough, those being polled must be lying!! Yeah, that's it." Pathetic.

The simple fact is they do, which is why the LAT's choice of methodology is so terrible. From an August article:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/ups...imes-poll/

The most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, which showed a tied race between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton heading into the Republican convention, found that 33 percent said they had voted for Mr. Obama and 25 percent for Mr. Romney. The results were similar in May: 41 percent for Obama and 32 percent for Mr. Romney (the numbers are higher because it was asked only of registered voters in May). The most recent NBC/WSJ poll, conducted after the Democratic convention, showed an even larger 46-to-31 split among registered voters.

This is not a new phenomenon. Back in 2012, Pew’s surveys showed Mr. Obama ahead by 34 to 25 among voters from 2008. If you have a really long memory, you might even remember controversy about polls that showed people recalled voting for George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000 by a comfortable margin in 2004 polls, even though Mr. Gore won the popular vote. But it’s not perfectly consistent, either: With Mr. Bush’s popularity flagging in 2007 and 2008, more polls started showing that voters recalled voting for John Kerry in 2004.