[POLL] U.S. Presidential Election 2016

[TotalInsanity4]

While the results are not representative of the United States, they're no joke. This election could be close.

Actually it's pretty dang close to the national average

 

[Lacius]

Actually it's pretty dang close to the national average

As of this post, according to aggregate poll numbers that weigh polls based on historical accuracy and methodology, Secretary Clinton is ahead by about 1.8 points nationally. While she's narrowly winning at a time when she's likely to be doing her worst (post-RNC but pre-DNC), too many liberals are in denial and think she's got it in the bag. There is a very real chance (as of now, 40% according to Nate Silver's polls-plus model) that Donald Trump will win.

 

[RevPokemon]

Actually it's pretty dang close to the national average

Not really. In the really national average it is close (with 3 or 4 candidates) or about 5% for Hillary with 2. Trump is not leading a single national poll by 10 points and Johnson is at about half his number

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Oh dang, I thought that Trump's percentage was lower on this one when I glanced at it XD now that I'm looking at it properly, yes, GBAtemp does appear to be more conservative than the national average

 

[RevPokemon]

Oh dang, I thought that Trump's percentage was lower on this one when I glanced at it XD now that I'm looking at it properly, yes, GBAtemp does appear to be more conservative than the national average

Or that there are kids/people who vote for lulz (which we know some do on the temp). If gbatemp was so conservative it would stand for George Bush America Temp

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Or that there are kids/people who vote for lulz (which we know some do on the temp). If gbatemp was so conservative it would stand for George Bush America Temp

God Bless America Trump

 

[Lacius]

Oh dang, I thought that Trump's percentage was lower on this one when I glanced at it XD now that I'm looking at it properly, yes, GBAtemp does appear to be more conservative than the national average

It's interesting to look at how the poll results compare to 2012 here and here.

 

[Inukami]

Actually it's pretty dang close to the national average

wow that is close

 

[RevPokemon]

It's interesting to look at how the poll results compare to 2012 here and here.

Myself I wonder too but to me the biggest questions are
1. if there was a no vote/both are bad/doesn't matter/ or 3rd party vote how would the 2012 poll be
2. How much of Trump's votes on this poll are for lulz?

 

[vayanui8]

Oh dang, I thought that Trump's percentage was lower on this one when I glanced at it XD now that I'm looking at it properly, yes, GBAtemp does appear to be more conservative than the national average

You're forgetting that half the Bernie Sanders supporters voted other. That's what changed the poll for the most part

 

[TotalInsanity4]

You're forgetting that half the Bernie Sanders supporters voted other. That's what changed the poll for the most part

Ahhhhh, true. I only just changed that vote myself. I'm guessing that it would probably about even out again if that weren't the case

 

[Foxi4]

I gotta say, I do love opinion polls. After the BREXIT vote, polling lost all credibility to me when it comes to large swathes of people, like an entire country for instance. Polls say someone's ahead by 1.8%? The same polls that said UK citizens aren't completely bonkers and there's a 90% chance they'll vote Remain? Okay. Thanks, Clairvoyant Consortium - I wish I had a crystal ball too.

 

[vayanui8]

I find that polls tend to be very inaccurate. There's just too many factors that can lead to inaccurate results. Hell, I'm sure there's even a trend between people who are willing to participate in a poll and their preference that differs from the actual vote. While a poll can be useful to try and get an idea, the results certainly aren't set in stone. That said, I think polls are pretty interesting because they can give you a general consensus among the group being questioned that oftentimes defies expectations

 

[Foxi4]

I find that polls tend to be very inaccurate. There's just too many factors that can lead to inaccurate results. Hell, I'm sure there's even a trend between people who are willing to participate in a poll and their preference that differs from the actual vote. While a poll can be useful to try and get an idea, the results certainly aren't set in stone. That said, I think polls are pretty interesting because they can give you a general consensus among the group being questioned that oftentimes defies expectations

They can't possibly be accurate - the average poll uses data from what, 1000 participants? The U.S. has a population of 318.9 million as of 2014, you're polling 0.000319% of the population, your chances of being accurate are statistically 0%. It's logistically impossible to make an accurate prediction based on so little data. With two candidates a coin toss is more accurate than a poll - at least you have a 50/50 chance of being right. Even if you polled a million people, that's still 1/319th of the population, less than 1%, you're wasting time.

 

[Lacius]

You're forgetting that half the Bernie Sanders supporters voted other. That's what changed the poll for the most part

This is the only thing about the poll that made me nervous back in June. GBATemp's liberals are disproportionately #BernieOrBust compared to the general public, but still.

I find that polls tend to be very inaccurate. There's just too many factors that can lead to inaccurate results. Hell, I'm sure there's even a trend between people who are willing to participate in a poll and their preference that differs from the actual vote. While a poll can be useful to try and get an idea, the results certainly aren't set in stone. That said, I think polls are pretty interesting because they can give you a general consensus among the group being questioned that oftentimes defies expectations

Not all polls are created equal. This poll, for example, is comically flawed. It's not representative of the United States, it allows people to selectively participate in the poll, and it has a low participant size. It also doesn't screen for age, citizenship, voter registration, likelihood to vote, etc. It's just for fun. It highlights, however, the dangers of focusing on individual polls that may or may not commit some of the aforementioned mistakes. Aggregate polls tend to be pretty accurate, and aggregate polls that weigh individual polls based on participant size, methodology, date, and historical accuracy tend to be even more accurate.

They can't possibly be accurate - the average poll uses data from what, 1000 participants? The U.S. has a population of 318.9 million as of 2014, you're polling 0.000319% of the population, your chances of being accurate are statistically 0%. It's logistically impossible to make an accurate prediction based on so little data. With two candidates a coin toss is more accurate than a poll - at least you have a 50/50 chance of being right. Even if you polled a million people, that's still 1/319th of the population, less than 1%, you're wasting time.

With the proper methodology, 1,000 individuals is more than enough to have a good representative sample of the country or a state, with the results typically having a >95% chance of falling somewhere within the margin of error. The higher the participant size, the lower the margin of error. The margin of error is calculated with the goal of getting to that >95% number.

Edit: With regard to aggregate polls, that margin of error drops drastically when we start adding those participant sizes together and averaging the results.

 

[RevPokemon]

Not all polls are created equal. This poll, for example, is comically flawed. It's not representative of the United States, it allows people to selectively participate in the poll, and it has a low participant size. It also doesn't screen for age, citizenship, voter registration, likelihood to vote, etc. It's just for fun. It highlights, however, the dangers of focusing on individual polls that may or may not commit some of the aforementioned mistakes. Aggregate polls tend to be pretty accurate, and aggregate polls that weigh individual polls based on participant size, methodology, date, and historical accuracy tend to be even more accurate.

Reminds me of my freshman year of HS, we all had to do a mock election and see how it would work out (It was all of the High school too). The results were that Ron Paul carried ten states (The options where Obama, Romney, and a write in but it had to be of a real person), Rocky Anderson won New Hampshire, Obama won 20 states and Romney won the rest.

With the proper methodology, 1,000 individuals is more than enough to have a good representative sample of the country or a state with the results typically having a >95% chance of falling somewhere within the margin of error. The higher the participant size, the lower the margin of error.

Exactly the only issues are if the methodology is flawed but most major polling groups are good at it since that is what those organizations/companies do for a living so there results are relatively accurate.

 

[Foxi4]

Unless your methodology involves magical fairy dust and unicorns, a group of 1000 individuals is not representative of 318 million. It just isn't, I'm sorry. I treat polls as jerk-off material for people with confirmation bias, I'm only interested in the real deal now.

 

[Lacius]

Unless your methodology involves magical fairy dust and unicorns, a group of 1000 individuals is not representative of 318 million. It just isn't, I'm sorry. I treat polls as jerk-off material for people with confirmation bias, I'm only interested in the real deal now.

The data is pretty clear that a truly random sample can indeed be representative of a larger population if the sample size is large enough. The larger the sample size, the more accurate the results (i.e. the smaller the margin of error). Any objective test for statistical significance shows that a sample size of 1,000 or 2,000 can be representative of 319 million with a reasonable margin of error. I would expect that virtually every statistician agrees on the power of random sampling. Aggregate polling has a great track record in predicting the results of elections, particularly when they're just before an election.

You can do a test yourself to gauge the power of random sampling. Let's say I am about to flip a coin 319 million times. Pretending we don't know the ratio of heads to tails in a coin flip, how many coin flips would you have to do in order to have a satisfactory random sample to figure out the likely result of my 319 million coin flips? The answer isn't even close to 319 million.

However, you do bring up a great point about how polls are very often treated as jerk-off material. A poll is only a snapshot in time (i.e. results may change wildly just as public opinion may change), and not all polls are created equal for the reasons I explained above. Therefore, it's easy for someone on one side of the political isle to engage in confirmation bias and only look at the polls that tell the story he or she wants to hear. If one cares more about what's true and less about what helps him or her sleep at night, it's important to look at careful aggregates and not focus too much on any single poll. Outliers will always exist in one direction or another for many reasons I've already outlined.

For example, an Ipsos poll came out recently showing Secretary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by three points. The poll's methodology was good, and it had a sample size of a whopping 2,434 likely voters. In summary, the poll did just about everything right. However, to say this means Clinton is ahead by 3 would be to ignore all the other polls before it. In a good aggregate that gives more weight to polls that were done recently, polls with higher samples sizes, and polls with good methodology, Clinton is actually ahead by about 1.9, not 3. What would be significant is if polls consistently started showing Clinton ahead by 3 again, and the aggregate number would reflect that. With an aggregate number, we're also dealing with many more thousands of people in the sample size.

 

[Foxi4]

I'm having a hard time believing that less than 1% of the population can be representative of the entirety of the population on a decision as divisive as a presidential election. There are 50 states, so if we need to ask 1000 participants for an opinion, we're talking to 20 people per state. Since we want to ask an equal amount of republicans and democrats, that's 10 people each. If you think 10 people are representative of your entire group, that's plain silly. If I took 10 random Tempers and asked them about their opinions on divisive issues, I'd conclude that we all have autism. Naturally it's not that simple - we'd want to tip the scales depending on whether the state is right-leaning or left-leaning, adjust for population and ask people who are definitely going to vote, but it's still a long shot anyways. There are plenty of republicans that are vocally anti-Trump, there are also plenty of democrats that are anti-Hillary. Not only that, you'd probably want to ask different age groups too, so that's a further sub-division. The margin of error is huge and I don't need to see any stats to sway me either way - common sense and simple math tell me that the whole premise is stupid. It's glorified clairvoyance, that's all there is to it. I don't need jerk-off material pre-voting anyways, and I wish people didn't either. I feel that polls are damaging to democracy - people should vote for who they believe in, not whoever has a better chance of winning according to a jerk-off think tank, which by the way isn't bias-free, because nothing is. If polling agencies were truly neutral, we wouldn't have such a huge variety of results - a consensus in polls is rarely the case, everyone just looks at polls that fit their narrative.

 

[RevPokemon]

I don't need jerk-off material pre-voting anyways, and I wish people didn't either. I feel that polls are damaging to democracy - people should vote for who they believe in, not whoever has a better chance of winning according to a jerk-off think tank, which by the way isn't bias-free, because nothing is. If polling agencies were truly neutral, we wouldn't have such a huge variety of results - a consensus in polls is rarely the case, everyone just looks at polls that fit their narrative.

A good point when you consider many of the polls are from media groups which of course have their own political bias.