An easy solution to improve political polls in Pittsburgh?

Submitted by Psi_in_PA t3_z6ci4p in pittsburgh

Can't stop thinking about how Oz underperformed his polls, sometimes by as much as by 5%.

The NY Times recently conducted a little study. Folks in Wisconsin could either complete a traditional, please voluntarily give up your time to an annoying pollster, or get paid upto $25 to answer the same political questions via mail.

The voluntary response rate was 1.6% or about 1 out of 62. Incentives netted almost 30% or about 1 out of 3. Almost three-fifths (58%) of people that picked up the phone reported that they “Follows what's going on in government and politics most of the time” vs. 42% of the mail participants.

Is this the least surprising study finding, ever?

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_MobyHick t1_iy0vl4f wrote

There's some evidence that the polls were off in Pennsylvania because Republican polling firms were flooding the zone with pro-Republican polls to try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. As noted here.

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dingurth1 t1_iy10liq wrote

What those numbers reflect is something I heard from an online commentator. Polls usually only have a grasp on "likely voters," those engaged with the process who behave predictably.

But what's happened a lot with the last few elections is the surge in "unlikely voters." Since the polls literally aren't tracking them, that's why we see such large estimate errors.

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UnaffiliatedOpinion t1_iy1ag7t wrote

It would be interesting to know how often the polling organizations fetch their lists and how they select within those lists. For instance is it possible that by November, polling orgs were still using pre-Dobbs voter rolls? Or would they already be fetching it monthly/weekly or something?

Each time they update would have cost and overhead to deal with. But the data only costs $20 each time, which is probably fairly trivial to most pollsters.

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put_the_ux_in_sux t1_iy3mwsz wrote

Polls are also largely land-line based although the practice is dying. Anytime you donate, signup for anything at cetera, there’s fine text that allows PACs and research companies to contact you via mobile phone or text.

So the polls are generally biased to be older, more centrist or conservatives and people with either the time or motivation (angry people, retirees).

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_MobyHick t1_iy4u6k5 wrote

That's why I hear, but I was getting polls by text this whole election cycle. I think 2020 too, but my memory is fuzzy.

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leadfoot9 t1_iy3k14c wrote

TL;DR: Spending money leads to a better product.

On a related note, I wonder how all of the stores who base decisions on voluntary customer surveys with no meaningful reimbursement are doing with that.

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