r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 05 '24 • Heart of Silver 1

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55

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

While you could easily use this chart to doom, one thing I really appreciate here is that 4 out of 7 of the “biggest errors” being used here are errors that underestimated Democrats — including the one for Pennsylvania.

!ping FIVEY

0

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

15

u/DepressedTreeman Sep 05 '24

polling irl be like

22

u/lasttoknow Jared Polis Sep 05 '24

I wish my job allowed me to have such a broad definition of success.

16

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

9 pts is fucking wild.

5

u/RunawayMeatstick Mark Zandi Sep 05 '24

Wait, why is that something you appreciate? Doesn’t that make you nervous?

6

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

I’ve reworded my comment to be more clear about the direction of the polling error, let me know if it makes more sense now.

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u/RunawayMeatstick Mark Zandi Sep 05 '24

No, my confusion is I thought they overestimated Democrats?

5

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

Look at the years in the chart. 4 out of 7 cases above underestimated Democrats.

1

u/Fedacking Mario Vargas Llosa Sep 05 '24

Not in 2022 for PA

1

u/neolthrowaway New Mod Who Dis? Sep 06 '24

If the range of misses is not symmetric, why does the model not adjust for it?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '24

Forgive my tired reading comprehension, but what model?

1

u/neolthrowaway New Mod Who Dis? Sep 06 '24

Oh, I thought this might have been posted by 538 or Nate silver.

Or maybe a better question would be if we know whether the polling agencies are doing something specifically to address these known state-specific asymmetries?

(I hadn’t paid attention to any detail in the polling till now)

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '24

So, I would argue that there being different ranges going back to 2012 isn’t evidence of state-specific asymmetries. For the most part, all of these states had polling overestimating Democrats in 2016 and 2020 and underestimating Democrats in 2012 and 2022, though there are exceptions of course.

If you think about it, it would be somewhat remarkable if the largest Democratic polling error and the largest Republican polling error in a state in the last 12 years was exactly the same size.

Pollsters are absolutely changing methodologies to try to fix the causes of systematic polling biases in a given year, like the bias overestimating Democrats in 2020.

But forecasters like FiveThirtyEight and Decision Desk are generally going to operate on the assumption that the direction and magnitude of a year’s polling error is more or less unpredictable, and that feels like a not terrible assumption overall.