Polling – devil’s playground? | We are the drain the swamp people

Michael Barone writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Why Political Polls Are So Often Wrong Fewer landlines, fewer people willing to talk. And somehow conservatives tend to be undercounted

Barone writes with insight even as he admits to not having the solution to polling’s increasing limitations. Reading his article we were reminded of some truths and came up with some observations and some hypothesis we think ought to be tested. Readers imaginations might be triggered as well.

Conceptual problems

Statistical sampling with regards to political polling is not the same as, for example, extrapolating from a random selection of otherwise uniform marbles about the entire bin with regards to one isolated variable such as percentages of blue or red. The difference with people is that they are in no way uniform, nor are their opinions, or their interpretation of the questions. People are complicated and certainly not static and trying to conform the question to some sort of universally understood concept, or the allowed response to mean the same thing to all respondents, is fraught with inconsistencies and undecipherables.

We wonder about political polling . . .

Have political types – i.e. people with a known propensity to vote – abandoned land lines because telemarketers and political organizations have abused their availability? Have they abandoned them at the same rate as others? If the rates are different does that not skew the responses?
Much has been hypothesized about Trump support – who constitutes it — whether people are sending a message with their announced support for some other purpose than actually being tied to Trump – what are the core issues or virtues that move them to favor Trump (depending on the tone to the question and alternatives offered).
Are people of the attitude that polls are for expressing what they want people to hear, while the polling booth is what they want done?
Given widespread awareness of the surveillance society, how much a factor as regards response rates are any doubts that the opinion poll expressed will actually be anonymous?
Is the only path to dependable political polling a reduction in distrust of government and media – the latter with all its perceived (and real) biases the prime sponsor of political polling?
Most political polling is still a person to person thing (one on one” interviews.” More and more people do not believe there is true anonymity in their responses regardless of the methodology of the poll. With that combination of factors in mind how much are responses a reflection of what people want the pollster to hear or see, what they think their opinion should be?
What are the implications of early voting on polling a week before the election? Some organizations stop polling in the days before the election – shouldn’t they stop when polling begins? To deselect people who have already voted from pre-election polling surveys may be to dismiss a mindset that determines the election, so the accuracy of the poll is skewed?
Would banning no-excuse-necessary early voting help increase poll accuracy?
What is the effect of the length of news cycle on polling?
Should we care what someone else thinks?
Even the binding plebiscite does not necessarily reflect public opinion, only who felt strongly enough to get out and vote.
More cogent answers and more dependable answers would be achieved by providing objective definition of terms and issues.
We believe association of “polling” and “the media” is strong and that low participation rates in part reflects distrust in “the media”
Is someone willing to answer a poll more willing to vote? We think not necessarily.