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US 2012 Presidential Election Polls

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  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 20,651 Mod ✭✭✭✭Brian?


    So in 4 years time can we agree just to accept what Nate Silver and the RCP average say? It'll save an awful lot of fretting and worrying.

    they/them/theirs


    And so on, and so on …. - Slavoj Žižek




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Duck Soup wrote: »
    Rasmussen relied solely on automated calls to landlines. They might want to revisit their adherence to that model.
    If I recall, there were approximately 26 percent of Americans that did not have landlines, only mobiles, and such mobile-only people had demographic characteristics that differentiated them from those with landlines. Rasmussen's method could produce systematic error and bias their samples. Perhaps this accounted for their polls tending to favour Romney during past months, producing a "Dewey Wins" effect?


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,684 ✭✭✭FatherTed


    Wow Rasmussen was way off. I wonder who's been paying him to give false hope to Romney and the Republicans when the other polls got it pretty much right. Oh and welcome to the 21st century, people use cell phones now.


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 20,651 Mod ✭✭✭✭Brian?


    Black Swan wrote: »
    If I recall, there were approximately 26 percent of Americans that did not have landlines, only mobiles, and such mobile-only people had demographic characteristics that differentiated them from those with landlines. Rasmussen's method could produce systematic error and bias their samples. Perhaps this accounted for their polls tending to favour Romney during past months, producing a "Dewey Wins" effect?

    You know what, I'd say 100% of seniors do have land lines. That could have skewed Rasmussen's polls in favour of Romney.

    they/them/theirs


    And so on, and so on …. - Slavoj Žižek




  • Registered Users Posts: 3,996 ✭✭✭Duck Soup


    Not calling mobiles in this day and age is insanity for a pollster, almost guaranteed to give an older, Republican-leaning 'house effect'. The aggregators like Nate Silver and Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium can tweak their models to weight against each pollster's house effect (read: bias), but it's surprising that Rasmussen (and Gallup) didn't weight differently themselves.

    Automated calling (introduced by Rasmussen to save money) also gets responded to more by older people - younger people are more likely just to put the phone down if it's not a live person on the other end - so that kind of compounded the problem.


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  • Posts: 25,611 ✭✭✭✭ Lillie Shaggy Wharf


    The cell-only issue has been flagged since at least 2004 that I can think of. I really don't understand why people insisted for so long that the result was in any doubt.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Duck Soup wrote: »
    Automated calling (introduced by Rasmussen to save money) also gets responded to more by older people - younger people are more likely just to put the phone down if it's not a live person on the other end - so that kind of compounded the problem.
    Mobile call IDing, call blocking, voice mail, etc., could have filtered out automated calls. It had also been reported that only 1 in 10 called replied to the surveys, cutting out 90 percent of the sample originally selected.

    Mobile-only without landlines is rapidly growing in the US too, so in another 2 to 4 years, the "Dewey Wins" effect of Rasmussen could be larger if they do not markedly change their sampling methodology.


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,286 ✭✭✭seligehgit


    cristoir wrote: »
    Silver was spot on.

    Yeah called all 50 on the money.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,149 ✭✭✭Ozymandius2011


    Rasmussen shown to have been a bit too bearish on Obama. While not acknowledging this, they hint at it (likely alluding to the cell phone issue) here:
    This race was very likely the last presidential election of the telephone polling era. While the industry did an excellent job of projecting last night’s election, entirely new techniques will need to be developed before 2016. The central issue is that phone polling worked for decades because that was how people communicated. In the 21st century, that is no longer true.
    Rasmussen was not far off on the national popular vote but was dreadful in some state polls, like NC, Wisconsin, Iowa and Florida where they overestimated the GOP vote considerably.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Both Rasmussen and Gallup polls favoured Romney during the past month up to the election. They will have to rethink their sampling methods before 2014 midterms, or potentially suffer the same fate again with Congressional races.

    Silver gained a lot of credibility in this election. His prediction model had been superior to Rasmussen and Gallup.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,149 ✭✭✭Ozymandius2011


    Final Rasmussen polls v actual results:

    Ohio -- Rasmussen: dead heat. Actual: Obama by 2.

    Virginia -- Rasmussen: Romney +2. Actual: Obama by 3.

    Iowa -- Rasmussen: Romney +1. Actual: Obama by 6.

    Wisconsin -- Rasmussen: tie. Actual: Obama by 7.

    Colorado -- Rasmussen: Romney +3. Actual: Obama by 5.

    Also apparently PPP was the most accurate pollster which is remarkable as they are Dem-aligned.


  • Registered Users Posts: 962 ✭✭✭darjeeling


    Final Rasmussen polls v actual results:

    Ohio -- Rasmussen: dead heat. Actual: Obama by 2.

    Virginia -- Rasmussen: Romney +2. Actual: Obama by 3.

    Iowa -- Rasmussen: Romney +1. Actual: Obama by 6.

    Wisconsin -- Rasmussen: tie. Actual: Obama by 7.

    Colorado -- Rasmussen: Romney +3. Actual: Obama by 5.

    Also apparently PPP was the most accurate pollster which is remarkable as they are Dem-aligned.

    All true.

    The final 2 weeks' swing state polling data from all pollsters shows Rasmussen to have a strong pro-Republican bias. They published 14 polls with a mean lean to Republicans of over 4 points when compared to the actual election results.

    Gravis Marketing (whose credibility as a genuine pollster has been questioned - link), was also biased towards Republicans, though not so much (2.6 point average in 13 polls).

    PPP did not show any systematic bias in their 18 swing state polls. Their polls had an average difference of 0.3 points (in Republican favour) from the actual election results.

    Pollster No. polls Mean poll - vote difference Range
    ARG 4 REP+4.5 (REP+6.6 .. DEM+0.1)
    Rasmussen Reports 14 REP+4.2 (REP+7.7 .. REP+0.2)
    Gravis Marketing 13 REP+2.6 (REP+5.8 .. REP+0.6)
    Purple Strategies 3 REP+2.2 (REP+3.7 .. DEM+0.1)
    NBC/WSJ/Marist 8 REP+1.5 (REP+4.7 .. DEM+4.1)
    New England College 3 REP+1.5 (REP+2.8 .. DEM+0.2)
    WeAskAmerica 6 REP+1.1 (REP+3.6 .. DEM+2.1)
    CNN/Opinion Research 4 REP+0.3 (REP+2.7 .. DEM+2.1)
    PPP (D) 18 REP+0.3 (REP+3.8 .. DEM+3.1)
    SurveyUSA 4 DEM+0.2 (REP+2.8 .. DEM+3.1)
    CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac 3 DEM+0.8 (REP+1.0 .. DEM+3.1)



    Edit: all data from RCP (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/president/ and http://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/live_results/president/)


  • Posts: 25,611 ✭✭✭✭ Lillie Shaggy Wharf


    The Rasmussen bias was known ages ago, the lad on electoral-vote.com kept a separate page going for the last 4 or 5 weeks excluding Rasmussen polls.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,996 ✭✭✭Duck Soup


    Just worth noting that both Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight and Drew Linzer at Votamatic called all 51 electoral college races (50 states plus District of Columbia) correctly and Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium called 50 out of 51 correctly, with Florida his sole miscall.

    I just wanted to lay out the remarkable accuracy of the poll aggregators so in 4 years time, we're not sitting here saying "Rasmussen/CNN/Gallup/Ipsos/YouGov has Chris Christie 19 points ahead/behind." The aggregators hace shown their worth and perhaps someone might care to mention this to Joe Scarborough the next time he has a sudden rush of blood to the ego and calls them "jokes" because they don't tell him what he wants to hear or believe.


  • Registered Users Posts: 962 ✭✭✭darjeeling


    Here's a fuller dataset from http://electoral-vote.com/

    102 swing state polls within final 2 weeks from pollsters producing at least 4 polls. ARG, Rasmussen, Gravis and Pulse Opinion all showed a pro-Republican bias. Zogby, SurveyUSA, PPP, and ORC Intl showed no bias. Non-swing state polling was a slightly different story, but not of much importance in predicting who was going to win.

    As others have said, the aggregators did indeed do a remarkable job of predicting the outcome, successfully correcting for biases where they occurred. They also got well ahead of the columnists in identifying when momentum shifted in the race; Republican spinners were still claiming momentum for Romney almost two weeks after the poll aggregators showed he was going backwards.

    227894.png
    Pollster Polls Mean polling error (MPE) in points MPE standard error prob. no bias
    ARG 4 REP+4.5 1.5 0.06
    Rasmussen 14 REP+4.2 0.6 6E-06
    Gravis Marketing 13 REP+2.6 0.5 2E-04
    Pulse Opinion Research 5 REP+2.5 0.9 0.06
    Marist Coll. 8 REP+1.5 1.1 0.22
    IPSOS 12 REP+1.1 0.8 0.19
    PPP 27 REP+0.3 0.4 0.45
    ORC International 4 REP+0.3 1.1 0.82
    SurveyUSA 8 REP+0.2 0.9 0.82
    Zogby 7 REP+0.1 1.7 0.93


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,880 ✭✭✭Raphael


    It's a little interesting that there are no pollsters that had a democratic bias, and all the unbiased ones had a slight republican leaning. I'm not trying to conspiracy theorize - it's more likely to be related to old fashioned methodologies targeting old fashioned voters better (who tend to be republican voters) - but it begs the question of whether this shows that pollsters need to get their act together and try to find a way to target young people.

    (It's also possible that the flaw is caused by another demographic split, mind you. THe age one just seems more likely, since it's pretty likely that's why Rasmussen were so off)


  • Registered Users Posts: 962 ✭✭✭darjeeling


    Raphael wrote: »
    It's a little interesting that there are no pollsters that had a democratic bias, and all the unbiased ones had a slight republican leaning. I'm not trying to conspiracy theorize - it's more likely to be related to old fashioned methodologies targeting old fashioned voters better (who tend to be republican voters) - but it begs the question of whether this shows that pollsters need to get their act together and try to find a way to target young people.

    (It's also possible that the flaw is caused by another demographic split, mind you. THe age one just seems more likely, since it's pretty likely that's why Rasmussen were so off)

    The slight bias in the main group of pollsters could actually be due to Obama picking up a few extra voters in the closing days, perhaps people who approved of his handling of the response to storm Sandy. Outside the swing states, Obama did out-perform his polls in North-Eastern states in the path of the storm, notably New Jersey.

    There was a clever analysis of the different polling companies by Drew Linzer of votamatic.org, showing they essentially split into two groups - a small number of multi-polling firms (Rasmussen, ARG and Gravis) favouring Romney, and a much bigger group of the rest of the major firms plus all the one-off pollsters, who collectively scored the race around 1.5 points more in Obama's favour (link). While there were some small house effects amongst the main group, there weren't any that seemed to show a
    pro-Obama bias anything like the pro-Romney bias of Rasmussen et al.

    The actual results now show - unsurprisingly - that the mainstream pollsters were right.

    errordists-20121030.png


  • Registered Users Posts: 36,023 ✭✭✭✭LuckyLloyd


    Black Swan wrote: »
    Both Rasmussen and Gallup polls favoured Romney during the past month up to the election. They will have to rethink their sampling methods before 2014 midterms, or potentially suffer the same fate again with Congressional races.

    Silver gained a lot of credibility in this election. His prediction model had been superior to Rasmussen and Gallup.

    That's quite the understatement! He nailed the Presidential election to the wall.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,149 ✭✭✭Ozymandius2011


    darjeeling wrote: »
    Here's a fuller dataset from http://electoral-vote.com/

    102 swing state polls within final 2 weeks from pollsters producing at least 4 polls. ARG, Rasmussen, Gravis and Pulse Opinion all showed a pro-Republican bias. Zogby, SurveyUSA, PPP, and ORC Intl showed no bias. Non-swing state polling was a slightly different story, but not of much importance in predicting who was going to win.

    As others have said, the aggregators did indeed do a remarkable job of predicting the outcome, successfully correcting for biases where they occurred. They also got well ahead of the columnists in identifying when momentum shifted in the race; Republican spinners were still claiming momentum for Romney almost two weeks after the poll aggregators showed he was going backwards.

    227894.png
    Pollster Polls Mean polling error (MPE) in points MPE standard error prob. no bias
    ARG 4 REP+4.5 1.5 0.06
    Rasmussen 14 REP+4.2 0.6 6E-06
    Gravis Marketing 13 REP+2.6 0.5 2E-04
    Pulse Opinion Research 5 REP+2.5 0.9 0.06
    Marist Coll. 8 REP+1.5 1.1 0.22
    IPSOS 12 REP+1.1 0.8 0.19
    PPP 27 REP+0.3 0.4 0.45
    ORC International 4 REP+0.3 1.1 0.82
    SurveyUSA 8 REP+0.2 0.9 0.82
    Zogby 7 REP+0.1 1.7 0.93
    A surprisingly good election year for Zogby, hitherot referred to by Nate Silver as "the worst pollster in the world".


  • Registered Users Posts: 962 ✭✭✭darjeeling


    A surprisingly good election year for Zogby, hitherot referred to by Nate Silver as "the worst pollster in the world".

    Zogby's polls (on-line rather than phone polls, hence the criticisms) had much bigger margins of error than the PPP and other firms' polls, but not the systematic bias seen for Rasmussen.

    The Zogby polls up on the Electoral Vote site seem to be only a snapshot of the full tracking polls (not sure why that is), and neither RCP nor Nate Silver used them at all. Silver did though use the Gravis polls, which Electoral Vote chose not to use.

    Very complicated, this polling business!


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  • Registered Users Posts: 319 ✭✭nagilum2


    darjeeling wrote: »
    Zogby's polls (on-line rather than phone polls, hence the criticisms) had much bigger margins of error than the PPP and other firms' polls, but not the systematic bias seen for Rasmussen.

    The Zogby polls up on the Electoral Vote site seem to be only a snapshot of the full tracking polls (not sure why that is), and neither RCP nor Nate Silver used them at all. Silver did though use the Gravis polls, which Electoral Vote chose not to use.

    Very complicated, this polling business!

    I thought Silver would nail everything except FL and VA, maybe CO. He definitely earned my respect in this cycle (and I already respected his number crunching abilities a lot).


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,149 ✭✭✭Ozymandius2011


    The SC is due to hear a challenge to the part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requiring mostly Southern states to get permission from the DOJ before changing electoral-laws. Chief Justice John Roberts (of Texas) has expressed concerns it may be outdated, despite the fact that the Bush DOJ had to intervene when Shelby County, Alabama violated the Act in 2005. Not surprisingly, that is the county making the challenge.

    There were reports in Alabama that road-blocks were placed around a polling-station in an African-American area.


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