Good piece. Helped me understand polling and aggregation a little better. As far as RCP goes they seem borderline deceptive. I was looking at their site today and they had the Yahoo News / YouGov poll at 45% approval for Trump but if you drill down to the actual data from YouGov they say it was 40%. I am sure I am missing some convoluted method for getting this from the data but it definitely skews their average favorably for Trump
Very interesting reading, so much more as I’ve noticed this difference myself and didn’t know how to interpret it. however I can still see a caveat before throwing right wing polls out: we’ve seen Trump clearly overperforming the polls in three consecutive PE cycles. Those polls were conducted by the same firms that couduct approval polls, and right wing assotiateds seem to be better. A coincidence? Very unlikely. Is there a convincing explanation for why these seemingly more biased pollsters actually did better? Could it be due to the fact that presidential approval is never tested by actual voting?
another super helpful article. The only thing that kind of confuses me: if the pollsters in question are clearly putting their thumb on the scale, why put them in the average? Are their data still reflective of some reality? Do the controls insulate the worst effects?
Hey Jack. That's a good question. One reason we might want the data is that we can infer trends even in biased polls — so long as the data is similarly biased across time. Another is that I don't want to be the polls police, deciding where the red line is that determines when a pollster is "too partisan" to trust. And while we are suspicious of these polls being so pro-Trump, we do not have proof that the data are intentionally rigged or otherwise manipulated. We have a set of standards for which polls we aggregate, and they aren't in violation of those.
Good piece. Helped me understand polling and aggregation a little better. As far as RCP goes they seem borderline deceptive. I was looking at their site today and they had the Yahoo News / YouGov poll at 45% approval for Trump but if you drill down to the actual data from YouGov they say it was 40%. I am sure I am missing some convoluted method for getting this from the data but it definitely skews their average favorably for Trump
Very interesting reading, so much more as I’ve noticed this difference myself and didn’t know how to interpret it. however I can still see a caveat before throwing right wing polls out: we’ve seen Trump clearly overperforming the polls in three consecutive PE cycles. Those polls were conducted by the same firms that couduct approval polls, and right wing assotiateds seem to be better. A coincidence? Very unlikely. Is there a convincing explanation for why these seemingly more biased pollsters actually did better? Could it be due to the fact that presidential approval is never tested by actual voting?
Another great piece. I learn something new in most of your newsletters!
The splines!
another super helpful article. The only thing that kind of confuses me: if the pollsters in question are clearly putting their thumb on the scale, why put them in the average? Are their data still reflective of some reality? Do the controls insulate the worst effects?
Hey Jack. That's a good question. One reason we might want the data is that we can infer trends even in biased polls — so long as the data is similarly biased across time. Another is that I don't want to be the polls police, deciding where the red line is that determines when a pollster is "too partisan" to trust. And while we are suspicious of these polls being so pro-Trump, we do not have proof that the data are intentionally rigged or otherwise manipulated. We have a set of standards for which polls we aggregate, and they aren't in violation of those.