Polls didn't suffer from the source of error that rocked the industry in 2016 and 2020. But they understated Democrats for reasons that are not possible to fix
I wonder if any of the big pollsters are going to focus more on recruiting & maintaining LT respondents (e.g. the "I'll take every poll" sickos and the "eh, I'll click once every few cycles"). I think #3 is most likely. Would love to see what Cygnal could do boosting some of the charts they bury on like page 45 of their methodology upload
This is fascinating and I'll be rereading it later, but for now -- as a Massachusetts native and longtime resident, I love that swing from +28 Dem poll average -> +33 Dem election result. Now if we could only do something about our dysfunctional heavily Democratic-dominated state legislature . . .
This is great analysis, but I’m trying to differentiate between extra D voters and R likely voters who stayed home. How do I get there from your numbers?
"Now, I do not agree with people when they make a big deal out of polling “errors” of just a couple points." GEM
Nor do I. Although the focus of this column is on the turnout assumption, going forward pollsters will need to make turnout assumptions and more! Given a sparse data set (too bad we don't have monthly elections) making good assumptions will continue to be challenging. Any future result inside 2% should be seen as total pollster dominance given the noise in the system. As for the chain of Republican coin flips, just like real coin flips three or four or even six in a row is not that improbable. Assuming pollsters aren't putting their thumbs on the scale.
Showing race polling like the House and Senate predictions (distribution with a range of probabilities) would help at least some people keep a better mental model of what a 53/47 poll result means.
I wonder if any of the big pollsters are going to focus more on recruiting & maintaining LT respondents (e.g. the "I'll take every poll" sickos and the "eh, I'll click once every few cycles"). I think #3 is most likely. Would love to see what Cygnal could do boosting some of the charts they bury on like page 45 of their methodology upload
This is fascinating and I'll be rereading it later, but for now -- as a Massachusetts native and longtime resident, I love that swing from +28 Dem poll average -> +33 Dem election result. Now if we could only do something about our dysfunctional heavily Democratic-dominated state legislature . . .
This is great analysis, but I’m trying to differentiate between extra D voters and R likely voters who stayed home. How do I get there from your numbers?
"Now, I do not agree with people when they make a big deal out of polling “errors” of just a couple points." GEM
Nor do I. Although the focus of this column is on the turnout assumption, going forward pollsters will need to make turnout assumptions and more! Given a sparse data set (too bad we don't have monthly elections) making good assumptions will continue to be challenging. Any future result inside 2% should be seen as total pollster dominance given the noise in the system. As for the chain of Republican coin flips, just like real coin flips three or four or even six in a row is not that improbable. Assuming pollsters aren't putting their thumbs on the scale.
Showing race polling like the House and Senate predictions (distribution with a range of probabilities) would help at least some people keep a better mental model of what a 53/47 poll result means.