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Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD | Hacker News Reader

>2024 election polls were wrong. Every single one had it either at a coin-flip odd between the two, or Kamala leading 1 point. It was 2 months ago, this isn't hard to remember.

>How it came out, in fact, was Trump winning popular vote with 2 million more votes than kamala, and almost 90 more electoral votes. That's FAR from coin-flip odds, and don't even get me started on the swing state polls, with Trump winning every single one.

It sounds like the polls were off about the popular vote by a few percentage points at most.

That meant a lot in the US election context, because the candidates were neck-and-neck.

It wouldn't change the basic picture of Mangione's support in the YouGov poll.

Why do I see so many basic reasoning errors like this on Hacker News? I thought this was supposed to be an intelligent forum with intelligent posters.

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>"It wouldn't change the basic picture of Mangione's support in the YouGov poll."

My single sentence underneath the horizontal divider in a sub-thread that primarily diverted to discussing the 2024 Election polls, and their accuracy, addresses that. Why didn't you quote that anywhere in your reply?

See if you can critique your own reasoning first, before asking me to do it more.

Tourangeau, R., & Yan, T. (2007). Sensitive questions in surveys. Psychological Bulletin, 133(5), 859–883. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6117379_Sensitive_Q...

>"Social desirability concerns can be seen as a special case of the threat of disclosure, involving a specific type of interpersonal consequence of revealing information in a survey—social disapproval. The literature on social desirability is voluminous, and it features divergent conceptualizations and operationalizations of the notion of socially desirable responding (DeMaio, 1984). One fundamental difference among the different approaches lies in whether they treat socially desirable responding as a stable personality characteristic or a temporary social strategy (DeMaio, 1984). The view that socially desirable responding is, at least in part, a personality trait underlies psychologists’ early attempts to develop various social desirability scales. Though some of these efforts (e.g., Edwards, 1957; Philips & Clancy, 1970, 1972) recognize the possibility that social desirability is a property of the items rather than (or as well as) of the respondents, many of them treat socially desirable responding as a stable personality characteristic (e.g., Crowne & Marlowe, 1964; Schuessler, Hittle, & Cardascia, 1978). By contrast, survey researchers have tended to view socially desirable responding as a response strategy reflecting the sensitivity of specific items for specific individuals; thus, Sudman and Bradburn (1974) had interviewers rate the social desirability of potential answers to specific survey questions. > >Paulhus’s (2002) work encompasses both viewpoints, making a distinction between socially desirable responding as a response style (a bias that is “consistent across time and questionnaires”; Paulhus, 2002, p. 49) and as a response set (a short-lived bias “attributable to some temporary distraction or motivation”; Paulhus, 2002, p. 49). > >A general weakness with scales designed to measure socially desirable responding is that they lack “true” scores, making it difficult or impossible to distinguish among (a) respondents who are actually highly compliant with social norms, (b) those who have a sincere but inflated view of themselves, and (c) those who are deliberately trying to make a favorable impression by falsely reporting positive things about themselves"

Looking forward to your response.

Why is it that so much online discussion of Mangione's actions is supportive?

Wouldn't social desirability bias predict that people would be reluctant to support Mangione's actions in any way which might be traced back to them personally?

Hypothetical evil plutocrats would be far more likely to dig up your social media history to get your take on Mangione than somehow obtain your response to a telephone poll.

The supportive online climate suggests that supporting Mangione could even be more socially desirable. There is social pressure to support him.

In any case, your Harris/Trump example suggests that social desirability effects should be on the order of perhaps 2-3 percentage points in a poll. So it wouldn't represent a drastic change to the overall picture.

My theory: Mangione cleaves society along an "extremely online" vs "touch grass" axis.

The passionate social media addicts, who see conspiracies and exploitation everywhere, support Mangione.

The "touch grass" people understand that healthcare is a systemic problem which requires systemic solutions. Political murders undermine the social contract, increase the likelihood of subsequent political murders, and contribute to the unraveling of society.

The "touch grass" people are underrepresented in online arguments, but well-represented in a randomized poll.

>"Wouldn't social desirability bias predict that people would be reluctant to support Mangione's actions in any way which might be traced back to them personally?"

I think you inadvertently answered your question with the preceding question to this one. Because it's harder to trace back a lot (not all) of individuals from their online identities to personal identities, they're probably more willing to show support for Mangione there, than in places that trace back to them directly.

Who are "touch grass" people? What are you talking about?

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