One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong

When your ideas can’t be sustained on their merits, your only option is to eliminate people who don’t share your world view. It’s a complete disaster and only breeds fragility.

I don’t. „Lived experience“ is just experience, but woke.

Hegemony.

Even assuming this unsupported claim is true, it's not necessarily relevant because correlation isn't the same as causation. For example, it could be that Dems are pretty good at reading their local electorate, and left-leaning areas are more tolerant of violent protest in the name of left causes. So Dems in lefty areas did not condemn violence, whereas Dems in swing areas did condemn violence. If this was true, ceteris paribus you would expect Dems who condemn violence to be more likely to lose, just because they're running more competitive races.

BTW, I think people are unfortunately quite tribal nowadays, and tend to assume that extremists have control of the other side even if that's not the case. And disavowing extremists is only partially effective at changing that perception. Think about it--how much have Trump's many disavowals of the far right shifted your perception that he's in bed with them? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc Probably not much.

>So either that’s not actually the critical factor, or it’s not possible to control for this factor in any sort of reliable way.

One failed attempt doesn't mean that something can't be done.

You got a source on that? It's clear that democrats lost ground, despite the Republican party's abject failure to control the coronavirus. This should have been the easiest win in world history, and somehow, the Democrats barely escaped with the presidency. There is pretty clearly something to explain here.

The tweet shor got fired for was literally giving data for this. Did you see the article about his firing?

The comment seems on-topic to me regardless of whether the culture war represents reality or not

To me it looks like "killing the messenger". Listeners want the most accurate data irrespective of the fact that some unknowns can be controlled for or not.

Furthermore to respond to the culture war that you brought up, I think Shor's theory fits my personal experience that some people stopped stating their political opinion in the open. So it is on topic.

That may very well be due to "HR" being a problem or those that play HR on public platforms. The explanation might be correct or wrong, it might resonate with people or not.

Your comment is just a data point here.

> Trump voters are not liars. As a Democratic pollster and campaign strategist, I feel strange typing these words. But it is required to debunk the “shy Trump voter” myth.

This was written days before the election.

My post isn’t about “Shor’s personal HR problem.” It’s about a culture that caused very smart people to misperceive the facts on the ground, and misallocate funding as a result, in the middle of a high stakes situation.

People in Silicon Valley should understand better than anyone that culture matters and bears on organizational and institutional effectiveness. Often these are pretty theoretical and abstract debates. But here is a case study that elucidates culture that works versus culture that doesn’t work.

I’m not weighing in on the larger cultural issue. As I caveated, this is context sensitive. Political polling, news, academia, and the like are areas where free discourse with respect to sensitive issues is particularly important for the effectiveness of the institution. This is less true if you’re running a food delivery business.

That said, and to be perfectly clear: Civis should not have fired Shor. It was very bad. (To be fair in the other direction: the guy is a known genius in leftie political circles and my understanding is that he's done very well for himself since termination as an independent consultant.) But really it's the only good example of the "Cancel Culture" paranoia, so right wingers feel the need to trot out the argument every time his name comes up.

He's not belittling them. He's supporting them and their cause, and offering course corrective advice so that they are better able to achieve their stated goals.

> This is ridiculous on it's own, but also ignores things like how wrong it is to blame the protests for violence often instigated by the police

Violence was instigated on both sides, but regardless of what the underlying reality was, the perception was that leftists were responsible for much of the violence, and that is problematic electorally.

The Twitter thread you linked is exactly why the Democrats lost power this cycle. This thinking, right here:

> And for those pointing out that Dems may have lost some House seats in conservative districts, at least in part due to BLM: If you define your party based on what you think might work in one district in Oklahoma, you're doing it wrong.

You may not like the fact that you have to think about the median Oklahoman voter, but the reality is that that voter is much more important than the median say, NYC voter. Because you already have NYC in the bag. Oklahoma, on the other hand, is up for grabs. Whether or not this system is how things ought to be, this is how it actually is.

David Shor has not, to my knowledge, ever made an argument belittling the BLM protests. I welcome any links you have that might demonstrate otherwise.

> how wrong it is to blame the protests for violence often instigated by the police

Neither Shor, nor the researcher he linked, Omar Wasow did this.

> how there is evidence that the protests strongly helped the Democrats.

Neither Shor nor Wasow have, to my knowledge, suggested that the protests were net negatives for Democrats. You have constructed a series of strawmen.

I’m increasingly of the opinion that opinion polling needs to be closely reconsidered for informing policy. People conflate polls with votes and something above 50% is seen as having something like a mandate. But it seems like a very immature field or being used for way more than it’s worth.

The person on the other end is getting paid, but I’m the one with the desired information. Are these terms acceptable?

The conversation ends quickly.

Push polls really poisoned the well...

"... voters who will refuse to take a survey flat out" is equivalent to "... simply tak[ing] a neutral, non-committal stance on almost every hot-button issue these days."

I'd lie to pollsters because I dislike the practice. It causes irrelevant news, and feeds into strategic voting. One distracts / causes pageviews, other one lowers the integrity of our democracy. My data can skew the accuracy of pollsters, however little that is, thereby hurting their interests.

I am also open to lying to telemarketers as I despise their job. Perfect example of a Bullshit Job.

huh... I have literally never met a single person that answers cold calls on personal lines, this was already SOP when I was a kid.

Seriously, who's picking up those calls?

I can't even tell you if a pollster called me... I'm getting about half-a-dozen calls a day from rando numbers that want to refinance my nonexistent student loans or talk to me about my home's nonexistent warrantee. I went to permanent do-not-disturb months before the election was even in the news. If you don't leave me a voice message I don't even know you exist; if you do leave me a voice message you've got about 3 seconds to convince me you're not a spammer before it's trashed.

- people who have too much free time on their hands will answer polls more

- gullible people, who tend to click on spam emails and ads and trust their news, will answer polls more

- people who've been vilified by the media for their views are unlikely to answer polls

- people who are afraid to be 'cancelled' or harassed for their views are unlikely to answer polls

- people who don't trust particular news organizations spreading political propaganda are unlikely to answer polls from those organizations

Guess we'll never know why those dummies would possibly hide their true preferences.

The article gives evidence. Here is the section:

"I use the General Social Survey’s question, which is, “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” ....

It turns out, in the GSS, that 70 percent of people say that people can’t be trusted. And if you do phone surveys, and you weight, you will get that 50 percent of people say that people can be trusted. It’s a pretty massive gap.

[Sociologist] Robert Putnam actually did some research on this, but people who don’t trust people and don’t trust institutions are way less likely to answer phone surveys. Unsurprising! This has always been true. It just used to not matter."

One way to deal with this type of dysphoria would be to spend some quality time with people who hold views different from the ones you have, and it would be much better if you didn't do that online, but in person - for reasons that I'm sure you understand well, since you are an HN reader.

Or, you decide that everyone on the other side of the fence is completely bollocks. But will this make your life better?

It's clear from context.

The above explanation is not judgemental. There are times when complex, expert arguments are correct. There are also times when people obfuscate hidden agendas behind clever sounding language. How powerful speech is at spreading ideas is a purely intuitive judgement, it's not easy to measure.

If you believe that expressing your opinion isn't particularly impactful on the world, that people who use complicated statistical methods aren't automatically trustworthy and might be obfuscating things with maths, that academic/intellectual types who talk a lot aren't really valuable to society, then automatically you'd find participating in a poll unappealing.

In contrast, if you believe speech/expressing opinions is an extremely powerful way to change the world, that experts who use maths are inherently worth supporting, that academics/intellectuals are amongst the best of us, then talking to a pollster might seem like a pretty important and virtuous way to spend your time.

The above explanation is invariant to cancel culture, sneering attitudes towards conservatives etc.

But I also feel like I have a "default setting" for situations where I don't really know who I'm talking to, and in those situations, what I said above still applies.

Also, you are not really giving an answer, because if the cause was "cancel culture" then the next question would be why cancel culture works that way and not the other way around.

Confusing terminology, but I guess "response bias" is about a false response by the participant to a question, and "non-response bias" is about whether the selected participant responded (participated) at all.

"To these men and his other supporters, Catiline offered the policy they longed for - cancellation of debts. It was precisely the policy to win him the support of the desperate from all ranks of society - and one that no respectable politician was prepared to offer"

Catiline has supporters both from the upper classes, where they had borrowed too much money and fallen into debt, and from the lower classes where they didn't have enough money in the first place, as well as dispossessed former soldiers.

It makes me think of some left contingents today where they are supported alike by upper-middle class children who have become burdened by inescapable student loan debt and lower class people who were just always burdened by poverty.

"All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019."

"People with incomes between $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among those scheduled to pay a higher average tax rate in 2021 than in years before the tax “cut” was passed. The C.B.O. and Joint Committee estimated that those with an income of $20,000 to $30,000 would owe an extra $365 next year "

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden...

It's a NYT Opinion piece by a Nobel recipient.

Urban populations, sure. Not particularly coastal aside from the fact that there's more urban population on the coasts, as county-level maps show pretty clearly.

“Elites” are more dubious. Sure, Democrats and Republicans (counting leaners) are closer to parity for voters with less than a college degree, with college grads and even moreso postgraduate degree holders strongly favoring Democrats.

OTOH, Blacks, who are overwhelming not elites, overwhelming are (and even more overwhelming lean) Democratic, and the same is true predominantly (though less overwhelmingly) of Hispanics.

So, yes, to the urban part, not particularly independently true of the “elite” or “coastal” part.

It seems to me the pattern is that where population density increases the people tend to be more politically leftward-leaning.

I'm from flyover country, one of those three states that went Biden this year surrounded by a sea of red. You know, one of the three states that elected half the members of 'the squad'. Sure, California rich people can throw in a lot of money, but that's true for both Republican and Democratic parties. Don't dismiss our importance in the Democratic party. We turn up & do the work, including the work of talking with our 'red' neighbors and actually trying to work things out in this country.

As for high & low vs middle, it just doesn't make sense to me. Lots of rich people supporting the Republicans -- lots, lots, lots. Lots of rich people supporting the Dems. Poor people split by race and geography. Middle class people split by race and geography. The split by geography and race is more significant than the split by income, in almost every presentation of data that I see.

One person with $100 million income has a higher average income than 999 people with a $100K annual income.

Averages aren't particularly useful here.

> https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1027/As-college-...

And as I pointed out, it's not solely for the reasons college-educated progressives are eager to suggest ("ignorant, uneducated people vote republican"). Student loan forgiveness is a flatly a regressive policy, amounting to a handout to people who are already economically advantaged.

> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/09/student-loan-forgiveness-cou...

> Biden laid out a narrower plan, saying he would forgive $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers, and the rest of the debt for those who attended public colleges or historically Black colleges and universities and earn less than $125,000 a year.

Imagine being a non-college educated voter earning $60-70k a year, and reading that people earning upto $125k a year will get a handout.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2020/data-on-display/educa... - note the associate degree and "some college" levels.

> He also pledged to fund it by raising corporate income taxes, which will reduce the profitability (and therefore, the value) of all publicly traded companies in the US, which means anyone with a 401(k) or IRA will indirectly be paying for this,

That's not how it works. The stockmarket is a comparative market where higher profitability compared to other companies is what affects stock price. This means tax increases to all companies don't drop stock prices.

Also the amount of tax increase is so small it is unlikely to be noticeable on the P&L anyway.

Seems like that may not be the case anymore.

Perhaps issue polling is much more useful than candidate polling.

This is one thing that I considered, but I wonder if exit polls would be a better choice. They're usually much more accurate than pre-election polls, so they serve as a hedge against large-scale fraud.

(As far as I can tell, actually, 2012 pre-election polling was off by a few percentage points too, and showed Romney leading for most of October...)

For example ask people to vote on ‘universal background checks’ alone, you’ll probably get a majority voting in favor.

If you ask if a gun owner should give their guns to a trusted friend of family member for safekeeping if they feel depressed or suicidal, most people would also say that was a good idea.

Of course they wouldn’t realize they had just criminalized it.

There was a narrative on e-day that Trafalgar had done a good job, because Democratic votes were disproportionately counted later in the week. But if you'd relied on Trafalgar predictions to allocate resources in an election, you'd have gotten depantsed.

At a poker table you get a high number of events to check against but a presidential election is only once every 4 years.

I wonder how accurate the local elections are vs the national? If neither is accurate, then that's a strong case for your point of view and a change in methodology.

I wonder how many people still think Nate Silver has a credible perspective: he's spun the above strategy into a job in unscientific punditry.

Correlated errors are tough!

When it comes to media, all information you consume must be read with a critical eye. You need to understand what assumptions are driving what is said, what the tone is and where they are drawing their conclusions from.

I'm not saying they need to give them equal status, necessarily - I'm saying that the employees of these institutions exist in a bubble mostly cause of class&geographic reasons.

The point is that all of these positions "Biden will naturally win in a landslide per polling" are tacitly accepted and challenges are dismissed as hearsay.

There needs to be some challenge/discourse against the elite orthodoxy.

I think this is built into the fabric of political views. If you're cautious about other people's motives, you'll want smaller government (less authority over you). The more you think folks are generally trustworthy, the less you'll fear having a larger government.

I wonder how many in any set think similarly about these surveys. I assume distrust is the most logical base state, hate unknown callers / blind interactions as sources of fraud, misinformation, and marketing (which I view as often leaning against the borderline of the former).

I would also hope and assume, given the religious bias correlated with Republicans in the US, that many of them are more trusting of others.

That might have been true in the past.

From 2016-2020, Trump supporters have been loudly and repeatedly called racistNaziMisogynistHomophobe, or the polite version, "deplorable". That is not an environment that encourages honesty.

He found that the more a republican a county is, the more republicans voted for Gop candidates, and against Trump. But only after the first 20% or so of the vote was in. In the first 20% of the vote Trump was doing better than the Gop candidates on the ticket.

Comes to the conclusion that an algorithm is syphoning votes from Trump to Biden. In a predictable linear fashion after the first 20% of the vote is counted. And flips more votes in more republican counties in an almost perfect linear way.

It doesn't make sense because Trump was polling better than the Gop candidates before the election, and was popular with republican voters.

The tallying software has a weighted vote feature. Where votes can be weighted for example 2:1 for one candidate over the other. Thinks that this was kicked in after 20% of the vote was in. Which would produce a linear drop that the graphs show.