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How much do pollster decisions influence election results, and what might the true Harris vs. Trump margin be when various polling adjustments are considered?

Image courtesy of interviewee. November 20, 2024

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This video discusses the complexities and challenges of polling, particularly in pre-election contexts. It explains that a typical poll may need to contact 40,000 voters to achieve a sample of 800 respondents, considering issues like low response rates (around 2%). This video reveals potential biases since the respondents might not reflect the wider population, especially as certain demographics are less likely to participate.

The author emphasizes that polling becomes increasingly difficult when predicting outcomes of elections, as sample demographics can misrepresent the electorate. Historical examples from the 2016 and 2020 elections illustrate how polls can underestimate or overestimate support for candidates, often due to unaccounted educational or partisan disparities.

The narrative highlights that pollsters must make assumptions about voter behavior and adjust their methods accordingly, which can lead to further inaccuracies. Furthermore, the difficulty of accurately gauging the electorate's composition introduces an inherent uncertainty in predicting close races.

Ultimately, the author argues that while polls can signal whether races are close or help gauge public opinion on various issues, they come with limitations that require careful interpretation. It's essential to recognize the ambiguity in polling results and not to overestimate their precision, as they can provide valuable insights into public sentiment even if not perfectly accurate.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Challenges in Polling Methodology**: The video discusses the significant difficulties pollsters face when trying to obtain a representative sample of voters, particularly in pre-election polls. The low response rate (e.g., 2%) means that to get a sample of 800 voters, pollsters must contact around 40,000 people, raising concerns about whether those who respond accurately reflect the larger population of non-respondents.

2. **Issues of Representation and Bias**: Pollsters must consider the biases of their samples, particularly in terms of education and partisanship. Historical polling errors, such as those seen in the 2016 and 2020 elections, are attributed to pollsters not adequately accounting for demographic differences that influence voter behavior. For instance, their samples often over-represented college-educated voters who leaned Democratic.

3. **Political Polarization and Trust**: The video highlights that current political polarization affects polling, with conservative and anti-establishment voters being less willing to participate in polls, which skews the sampling process. Pollsters struggle to determine whether discrepancies in their samples are due to actual voter distributions or reluctance from certain groups to engage with polling efforts.

4. **Limitations of Polling Accuracy**: The inherent limitations of polling are emphasized, particularly the mathematical realities of sampling errors. Even under ideal conditions, the results of polls can only provide a rough estimate of voter preferences and cannot deliver precise percentages, such as 47.3%. Polls are more valuable for indicating whether a race is close rather than providing definitive answers.

5. **Value of Polling in Democratic Processes**: Despite their flaws, the author argues that polling remains a crucial tool for gauging public opinion, assessing government approval, and understanding electoral dynamics. Polls can indicate general trends and help convideoualize election outcomes, providing insights into public sentiment that are not captured through alternative means, such as social media or protests. Thus, while polls may not always be perfectly accurate, they still play an invaluable role in democratic discourse.

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Here are some key quotes from the video you've , which discuss various challenges and insights related to polling, particularly in the convideo of pre-election surveys:

1. **Response Rate Challenge**:
- "It turns out like with a 2% response rate, to get 800 people to take my call, I need to call 40,000 voters."

2. **Sample Representation**:
- "How likely is it those 800 people reflect the 39,200 people who didn't take my poll?"

3. **Bias in Polling**:
- "We know those with college education or molecular to take polls."

4. **Difficulties of Pre-Election Polling**:
- "Pre-election poll is like a polling on level of difficulty, you know, three steps higher."

5. **Mistakes of Previous Polls**:
- "The polls in the United States... missed in large part because the pollsters were not accounting for the fact that education differences mattered."

6. **Partisan Response Issues**:
- "Republican or kind of conservative or anti-establishment, voter populist voters were less likely to take polls than Democrats who are more enthusiastic."

7. **Assumptions in Polling**:
- "If I assume like I'm gonna make my data look like 2020, I'm assuming every single Trump voter in 2020 is gonna vote for 2024, which we know is not true."

8. **Inherent Limitations of Polls**:
- "The rules of math say that if I call a thousand people as a poll... my answers are gonna vary."

9. **Polling Accuracy**:
- "A poll can tell me if it's close or if it's kind of, you know, not close."

10. **Consequences of Misinterpretations**:
- "If we throw away polling... then I think that's real unfortunate."

11. **Value of Polls**:
- "It's kind of remarkable that given all these difficulties, I can talk to 800 people that's held by hundreds of millions of people."

12. **General Political Insight**:
- "Even though they understated Trump, you know, in another sense they helped, they ballpark kind of range of plausible options."

These quotes encapsulate the essence of the video's argument regarding the complexities and difficulties of polling, especially in predicting electoral outcomes and capturing public sentiment accurately.

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Polls that I wanna do a poll of,

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let's say 800 voters, right?

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That's the average poll we saw in kind

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of pre-election polls in the United States.

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And so to get those 800 voters, I can kind of consult a list

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of registered voters, which, you know, every state has,

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and I can randomly sample voters

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and try to call them, right?

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Or I can try to email them and kind of get their opinion.

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It turns out like with a 2% response rate, which is

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what we have these days, that to get 800 people

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to take my answer, my call, I need

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to call 40,000 voters, right?

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So right off the bat, right, I know

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that even if I do things perfectly,

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even if I randomly sample registered voters

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to get the 800 people in my sample, I need

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to call 40,000 people.

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And so then I'm confronted with a stark real like, alright,

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how likely is it those 800 people reflect the 39,200 people

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who didn't take my poll, my call?

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And you know, right off the bat, they're weird, right?

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So, you know, they're different because like those 800 took

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my poll, the 39,200 did not, right?

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So right off the bat, right, that's kind of

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where the math and statistics ends.

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And so now it's kind of the art

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and the decisions of the pollster.

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So now as a pollster, I have to say, well,

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I have these 800 people and we have known biases.

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We know older people are molecular to take polls.

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We know those with college

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education or molecular to take polls.

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And so now I need

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to start making decisions about making those 800 people look

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like the population

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that I'm interested in, in kind of measuring.

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And so this also is kind of an important,

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disjunction point.

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So if I'm doing a normal poll of just like registered voters

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to, to assess public policies or government approval, right?

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I'm in a better situation

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because like I know what the United States

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or the UK looks like demographically, right?

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Or if I know what a state looks like demographically.

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And so I know exactly in some sense demographically

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how my set

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of respondents differs from who I'm trying to measure.

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But in a pre-election poll, I don't have that luxury, right?

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So a pre-election poll is like a polling on level

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of difficulty, you know, three steps higher

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because now I need to figure out,

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or I need to make an educated guess about who's going

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to vote in 2024,

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and then what are the ways in which my sample may, may,

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may, differ from that.

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And so, for example, in 2016,

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the polls in the United States, they missed in large part

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because the pollsters were not accounting for the fact

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that education differences mattered, right?

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We knew that more educated people are likely to take polls.

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But in 2016 in the United States, we saw that those,

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the college degrees were more likely to vote

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for Secretary Clinton with those,

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with less than a college degree were more likely

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to support, president Trump.

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And so when the pollsters weren't accounting for that,

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they had too many ed

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college educated people in their samples.

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So they weren't accounting for that.

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So the polls all overstated, you know, secretary Clinton.

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And that kind of led to the kind of result

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that we had in the polling where there was a giant mess.

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And so again, the problem the pollsters face is

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that we don't know what the electors looks like

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and we try to figure out kind of

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how there's differences there.

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And if you get that wrong, right?

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Or if you fail to account for that differences,

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which we don't know until it happens, right?

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You're gonna get the result wrong. You're always fighting

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the last battle in polling, right?

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And so in 2020, like we knew the education

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was a problem, right?

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So they were adjusting the results to kind

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of make sure the people answer my poll looked like the

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population, what we thought the elector was gonna be in

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2020, right?

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They all the posters were doing that

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and we, and they missed, right?

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They missed dramatically across the board

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by understating kind of support for President Trump.

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And so here, there was a new problem that emerged, right,

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that kind of also persisted in 2024, which is

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that not only is it kind of, we get differences in terms

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of education, but now there seems

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to be difference partisan responses, right?

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And so in particular Republican or kind of conservative

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or anti-establishment, voter populist voters were less

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likely to take polls than Democrats

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who are more enthusiastic.

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And so this then presents a super

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big quantity for pollsters, right?

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Because like I look at my sample

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and I say, I've got too many Democrats, right?

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Or I have too many Biden supporters, for example, in 2024,

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then I do Trump supporters, but like relative to what?

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Like how do I know whether that's a problem

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with people taking my poll

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or whether it's a statement about the electorate, right?

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So if I have a lot of Biden voters in 2024, is that

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because Democrats are gonna be really enthusiastic

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about voting in 2024?

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Or is it because basically I have, you know,

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not enough republicans

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because they're, they're reluctant to take my, my poll,

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you know, because like why would I trust a fake poll

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or fake news or, or share my views if I think those views

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are gonna be mischaracterized

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and that lack of trust then can cause

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problems that pollsters have to face.

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And so now I have a really hard difficulty

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because now if I have a partisan balance

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who takes my polls, right?

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Trying to fix that is like super complicated.

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This is why polls have never done this before, really

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before 2020 because you're basically in some sense picking

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the answer, right?

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So like in politics nowadays, everything is so politicized.

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Everything is so partisan that if I pick a partisan way

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number, right, or if I wait to pass vote,

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I'm basically picking the answer, right?

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'cause 95% of, of Trump voters in 20,

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in 2020 voted for Trump.

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You know, 95% of Biden voters voted for Harris.

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And so depending upon

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what I think those numbers are going to be, right?

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In 2024, I'm basically choosing the electorate, right?

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If I think the electorate's gonna be 40% Democrat, right?

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Versus 40% Republican, right?

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That's gonna have a huge impact on my top line number

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that I'm gonna, I'm gonna release.

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But the problem is I don't know what the truth is, right?

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So I don't know what the true balance is

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and different pollsters come up

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with different measures about partisanship or pass vote.

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So what we saw a lot of pollsters doing this go, go

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around is basically waiting on pass vote.

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So let's break that down what that means.

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So what that means is then when are you taking

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my poll in 2024?

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I'll ask you how you voted in 2020, right?

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And you'll say who you vote and I'm gonna assume

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that you didn't lie to me, right?

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Which is a problem, but you know, probably a small one.

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The bigger problem is then, alright, so now I know kind of

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what the people who took my poll said they,

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how they voted in 2020, but I don't know what

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that's gonna look like in 2024, right?

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So if I wait to kind of make

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who takes my poll this time look like

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what the electorate looked like in 2020, I've got a couple

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of kind of built assumption

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assumptions that I don't know if they're true.

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First of all, I don't know

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how many new voters there's gonna be, right?

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And kind of how that could shift things.

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And second of all, if I assume like I'm gonna make my data

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look like 2020, I'm assuming

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that every single Biden voter in 2020 is gonna vote in 2024.

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Every single Trump voter in 2020 is gonna vote for 2024,

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which we know is not true, right?

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And if there's a slight change in that, right?

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So for example, if Trump voters were slightly more likely

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than Biden voters should vote in 2024, which again,

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preliminary data seems to suggest,

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well then I'm gonna be off, right?

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Because I'm assuming something about the 2024 electorate

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that is turns out, you know, not, not to be true,

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but the problem's like even if that's not the case, right?

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Even if I nail that right?

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Think about what you're actually doing.

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So I'm basically holding Biden

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And, and Harris Voters fixed,

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Right? 'cause they're all gonna vote for

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the same candidate.

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And so that means the only way the polls are gonna

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Vary, and this Is why I think you saw

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so many polls in 2024, basically give you the same answer.

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Because once I weighed on past vote, the only way

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that my polls are gonna vary right from 2020

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and from one another is among that small group of voters

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who said they did not vote, right?

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That's the only, that's kind of free

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or that's not being constrained by decisions

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that I am making as a pollster effectively.

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And so in a poll of 800 people, right?

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That's 80 people, right?

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So basically all the polling variation, right,

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is constrained to what those 80 people out of the 800, out

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of the 40,000 that I try to call are kind of responding.

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And so once you realize that, you're like, yeah,

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that's gonna be really tight to try

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to call like a one point race.

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So I'm relying on the views of these 80 people who happen

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to take my poll and I better hope that they're reflective,

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of kind of general population.

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And again, you don't know that, until

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after the fact. There's an inherent

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Limitation in polling.

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And I think that that's not very well communicated

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because I think we expect more than polling than

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what it can do particularly in pre-election polling.

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And again, I wanna kind of make this distinction

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between pre-election polling where I don't know

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what I'm trying to wait to, right?

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And I, and errors in that can easily produce the type

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of errors that we see in the elections

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versus kind of election.

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British polling in general,

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Which kind of were

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Smaller errors are kind of more livable

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because they're less consequential.

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So the question like how I fix that, the problem is

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that it's not really fixable in, in, in a fundamental,

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in a fundamental way, which is that just if,

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if I'm in a perfect survey world, right? Where

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Every single person I call answers my poll, right?

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The rules of math say

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that if I call a thousand people as a poll,

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Right? My

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answers are gonna

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Vary. And you know, I try

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to estimate the proportion

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of something my an answers are gonna vary

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by like three percentage points plus or minus, right?

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My margin of error just because of random sampling, right?

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The thousand people I happen to talk

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to are gonna be slightly different than a thousand people.

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I did the exact same thing at a slightly different time.

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And that's unavoidable, right?

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I can get a larger and larger sample,

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But there's some Inherent

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randomness that's in that, right?

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Just you can't escape that.

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I can try to wait and try to make a smaller,

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but then I'm making assumptions that could be wrong,

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that you should try to account for that

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as well. And so what

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Does that mean? So that means

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If I have a 3% error, like just if everyone does what I,

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you know, polls want them to do,

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answer the phone when they're called, then if I'm trying

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to like predict an election, that means I'm subtracting two

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different estimates that I've made, right?

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This one has 3% error, this one has 3% error,

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which means my margin, right?

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Which is what everyone talks about.

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The difference between these two candidates

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or these two parties is then gonna be like approximately

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like six percentage points, right?

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And that's unavoidable, perfect world of polling.

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And so once you realize that, it's like

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what are we doing right when we're trying

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to like poll these races that we think are tied

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because there's some inherent unavoidable, you know,

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we can't get much closer than that just in a perfect world

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unless I happen to get lucky

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or correct in my waiting assumptions,

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which I don't know if they're true or not.

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And so, you know, the polls happen to get it right

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in general, but like given the, the difficulty of the task,

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like that's something, that's something you can bank

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on kind of going forward.

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And so I think what that means in terms

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of going forward is kind of appreciate

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that like a poll can tell you if the race is close

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or not, right?

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But the idea that you can extract information about whether

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or not a one point change is meaningful or,

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or just kind of randomness

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or the result of a pollster making a slight decision like

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that is well beyond, like I can't determine that

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and I'm an expert, right?

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And so I think the way to do that is just kind of step back

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and say, look, a poll can tell me if it's close

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or if it's, if it's kind of, you know, not close.

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And I, you know, I think we do a disservice

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and we try to think we can do more than

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that even if we happen to be lucky in some of the past

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and kind of, you know, doing that.

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And so why that matters, right?

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Is that once you recognize that what polls can do,

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like the difficulty is that you think of pre-election polls

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or if they've missed it again, they understated Trump by two

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to three percentage points in 2020.

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In 24 they understated by four percentage points in 2020.

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This is all garbage. Like I'm, you know,

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these pollsters dunno what they're doing, which

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is I think unfortunate

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and kind of also not exactly the right conclusion.

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I mean, 'cause the right conclusion is that it's kind

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of remarkable to me, right?

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That given all these difficulties, I can talk to 800 people

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and get within five points of a margin of an election

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that's held by hundreds of millions of people.

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Now that's not enough to call Pennsylvania or Wisconsin

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or any kinda super close races,

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but it's a remarkable testament that I can,

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on such small data I can get in the ballpark.

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And so long as what you're trying to use polling

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for is like in the ballpark, then I think you're okay.

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So a lot of public opinion polling is not

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trying to predict elections.

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A lot of public opinion polling is trying

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to say what's the approval of the government?

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What's the support for a given policy?

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And there the answer whether it's like 47

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or 52 doesn't really matter, right?

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Because like you look at that

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and you, the qualitative conclusion you draw from that,

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it's like it's close, right?

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It's evenly split

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or is there a large support for this policy

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or a large support for this government or not?

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And so in so far as we're not trying

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to make decimal point comparisons, right,

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which are far more precise than what we can actually do,

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then I think polling gives us useful information.

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And I think it's important to hold onto that

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because like absent that,

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what do we have if we don't have polling, which is kind

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of small, the democratic

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where we can help elevate the voices of just kind

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of normal people who happen to answer the phone, right?

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So maybe they're not that normal, but quasi normal,

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at least, at least, you know, then we're left to what?

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Social media people, well their voices are kind of loud

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and kind of unrepresented.

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People who are pro pro protesting the streets, again loud

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but not reflective of the general population.

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And so if we throw away polling right,

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because of, of small misses in pre-election polling,

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then I think that's real unfortunate.

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'cause then we have no ability to assess kind of how

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what the governments are doing, reflect the opinions

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of the people or kind of what an election even means, right?

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So we just had an election in the United States, right?

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President Trump was elected. What does that mean? Right?

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An election, a ballot box

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of vote count doesn't tell you what that means.

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It doesn't tell what people were thinking, right?

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And therefore kind of what the potential mandates are if, if

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that exists among the public,

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but only a poll can kind of do that.

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And so long as you, you kind of appropriately account

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for like, yeah, it's gonna get me in the ballpark,

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but it's not gonna get me like 47.3%, right?

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It's, it's not able to do that of a precision.

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I still think that information is useful

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and helps us guide what's going on.

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So example, the polls were all kind of, you know,

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they all understated Trump this year,

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but they were all saying it's gonna be a close race, right?

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And so I think that was useful

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for people going into the race like, look, you know,

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you didn't see a giant outcry about what happened

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because like people were kind of got their brains wrapped

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around that this could go either way, right?

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You could see Vice President Harris winning,

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you could see President Trump winning and,

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and that's what all the polls were saying.

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So even though they understated Trump, you know,

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in another sense they helped, they, they ballpark kind

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of range of plausible options

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or kind of opportunities there.

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And I think that's helpful for kind of allowing kind of the,

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you know, the transition of power

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and kind of helping people

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understand, you know, what's going on.

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And so again, it's, it's out about putting a proper level

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of kind of precision around these numbers.

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And I don't think, to be honest,

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like we do a good job presenting that

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or kind of explaining that to people

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because, you know, we like to know the score.

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We like to know who's up and who's down

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and we want things, you know, precise black

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or white binary in the world.

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But the reality is it's, it's called kind of mushy and gray

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and you have to be a little bit comfortable in the ambiguity

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and say, well, we're kind of in the ballpark, right?

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But that's still being in the ballpark is better than,

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you know, not being in the ballpark at all.

Challenges of Accurate Polling: Sampling and Representation

00:00:00 - Polls that I wanna do a poll of, let's say 800 voters, right? That's the average poll we saw in kind of pre-election polls in the United States. And so to get those 800 voters, I can kind of consult a list of registered voters, which, you know, every state has, and I can randomly sample voters and try to call them, right? Or I can try to email them and kind of get their opinion. It turns out like with a 2% response rate, which is what we have these days, that to get 800 people to take my answer, my call, I need to call 40,000 voters, right? So right off the bat, right, I know that even if I do things perfectly, even if I randomly sample registered voters

00:00:35 - to call 40,000 people. And so then I'm confronted with a stark real like, alright, how likely is it those 800 people reflect the 39,200 people who didn't take my poll, my call? And you know, right off the bat, they're weird, right? So, you know, they're different because like those 800 took my poll, the 39,200 did not, right? So right off the bat, right, that's kind of where the math and statistics ends. And so now it's kind of the art and the decisions of the pollster. So now as a pollster, I have to say, well, I have these 800 people and we have known biases.

00:01:06 - We know those with college education or molecular to take polls. And so now I need to start making decisions about making those 800 people look like the population that I'm interested in, in kind of measuring. And so this also is kind of an important, disjunction point. So if I'm doing a normal poll of just like registered voters to, to assess public policies or government approval, right? I'm in a better situation because like I know what the United States or the UK looks like demographically, right? Or if I know what a state looks like demographically. And so I know exactly in some sense demographically

Challenges in Pre-Election Polling Accuracy

00:01:36 - of respondents differs from who I'm trying to measure. But in a pre-election poll, I don't have that luxury, right? So a pre-election poll is like a polling on level of difficulty, you know, three steps higher because now I need to figure out, or I need to make an educated guess about who's going to vote in 2024, and then what are the ways in which my sample may, may, may, differ from that. And so, for example, in 2016, the polls in the United States, they missed in large part because the pollsters were not accounting for the fact that education differences mattered, right? We knew that more educated people are likely to take polls.

00:02:10 - the college degrees were more likely to vote for Secretary Clinton with those, with less than a college degree were more likely to support, president Trump. And so when the pollsters weren't accounting for that, they had too many ed college educated people in their samples. So they weren't accounting for that. So the polls all overstated, you know, secretary Clinton. And that kind of led to the kind of result that we had in the polling where there was a giant mess. And so again, the problem the pollsters face is that we don't know what the electors looks like and we try to figure out kind of how there's differences there. And if you get that wrong, right?

00:02:40 - which we don't know until it happens, right? You're gonna get the result wrong. You're always fighting the last battle in polling, right? And so in 2020, like we knew the education was a problem, right? So they were adjusting the results to kind of make sure the people answer my poll looked like the population, what we thought the elector was gonna be in 2020, right? They all the posters were doing that and we, and they missed, right? They missed dramatically across the board by understating kind of support for President Trump. And so here, there was a new problem that emerged, right, that kind of also persisted in 2024, which is that not only is it kind of, we get differences in terms

Challenges of Polling Amid Political Partisanship

00:03:11 - to be difference partisan responses, right? And so in particular Republican or kind of conservative or anti-establishment, voter populist voters were less likely to take polls than Democrats who are more enthusiastic. And so this then presents a super big quantity for pollsters, right? Because like I look at my sample and I say, I've got too many Democrats, right? Or I have too many Biden supporters, for example, in 2024, then I do Trump supporters, but like relative to what? Like how do I know whether that's a problem with people taking my poll or whether it's a statement about the electorate, right?

00:03:44 - because Democrats are gonna be really enthusiastic about voting in 2024? Or is it because basically I have, you know, not enough republicans because they're, they're reluctant to take my, my poll, you know, because like why would I trust a fake poll or fake news or, or share my views if I think those views are gonna be mischaracterized and that lack of trust then can cause problems that pollsters have to face. And so now I have a really hard difficulty because now if I have a partisan balance who takes my polls, right? Trying to fix that is like super complicated.

00:04:14 - before 2020 because you're basically in some sense picking the answer, right? So like in politics nowadays, everything is so politicized. Everything is so partisan that if I pick a partisan way number, right, or if I wait to pass vote, I'm basically picking the answer, right? 'cause 95% of, of Trump voters in 20, in 2020 voted for Trump. You know, 95% of Biden voters voted for Harris. And so depending upon what I think those numbers are going to be, right? In 2024, I'm basically choosing the electorate, right?

Challenges in Predicting Voter Behavior for 2024 Polls

00:04:44 - Versus 40% Republican, right? That's gonna have a huge impact on my top line number that I'm gonna, I'm gonna release. But the problem is I don't know what the truth is, right? So I don't know what the true balance is and different pollsters come up with different measures about partisanship or pass vote. So what we saw a lot of pollsters doing this go, go around is basically waiting on pass vote. So let's break that down what that means. So what that means is then when are you taking my poll in 2024? I'll ask you how you voted in 2020, right? And you'll say who you vote and I'm gonna assume

00:05:13 - Which is a problem, but you know, probably a small one. The bigger problem is then, alright, so now I know kind of what the people who took my poll said they, how they voted in 2020, but I don't know what that's gonna look like in 2024, right? So if I wait to kind of make who takes my poll this time look like what the electorate looked like in 2020, I've got a couple of kind of built assumption assumptions that I don't know if they're true. First of all, I don't know how many new voters there's gonna be, right? And kind of how that could shift things. And second of all, if I assume like I'm gonna make my data look like 2020, I'm assuming

00:05:47 - Every single Trump voter in 2020 is gonna vote for 2024, which we know is not true, right? And if there's a slight change in that, right? So for example, if Trump voters were slightly more likely than Biden voters should vote in 2024, which again, preliminary data seems to suggest, well then I'm gonna be off, right? Because I'm assuming something about the 2024 electorate that is turns out, you know, not, not to be true, but the problem's like even if that's not the case, right? Even if I nail that right? Think about what you're actually doing.

Challenges of Polling: Variability and Expectation Management

00:06:16 - And, and Harris Voters fixed, Right? 'cause they're all gonna vote for the same candidate. And so that means the only way the polls are gonna Vary, and this Is why I think you saw so many polls in 2024, basically give you the same answer. Because once I weighed on past vote, the only way that my polls are gonna vary right from 2020 and from one another is among that small group of voters who said they did not vote, right? That's the only, that's kind of free or that's not being constrained by decisions that I am making as a pollster effectively.

00:06:46 - That's 80 people, right? So basically all the polling variation, right, is constrained to what those 80 people out of the 800, out of the 40,000 that I try to call are kind of responding. And so once you realize that, you're like, yeah, that's gonna be really tight to try to call like a one point race. So I'm relying on the views of these 80 people who happen to take my poll and I better hope that they're reflective, of kind of general population. And again, you don't know that, until after the fact. There's an inherent

00:07:16 - And I think that that's not very well communicated because I think we expect more than polling than what it can do particularly in pre-election polling. And again, I wanna kind of make this distinction between pre-election polling where I don't know what I'm trying to wait to, right? And I, and errors in that can easily produce the type of errors that we see in the elections versus kind of election. British polling in general, Which kind of were Smaller errors are kind of more livable because they're less consequential. So the question like how I fix that, the problem is that it's not really fixable in, in, in a fundamental, in a fundamental way, which is that just if,

Understanding Margin of Error in Polling

00:07:48 - Every single person I call answers my poll, right? The rules of math say that if I call a thousand people as a poll, Right? My answers are gonna Vary. And you know, I try to estimate the proportion of something my an answers are gonna vary by like three percentage points plus or minus, right? My margin of error just because of random sampling, right? The thousand people I happen to talk to are gonna be slightly different than a thousand people. I did the exact same thing at a slightly different time. And that's unavoidable, right? I can get a larger and larger sample, But there's some Inherent

00:08:18 - Just you can't escape that. I can try to wait and try to make a smaller, but then I'm making assumptions that could be wrong, that you should try to account for that as well. And so what Does that mean? So that means If I have a 3% error, like just if everyone does what I, you know, polls want them to do, answer the phone when they're called, then if I'm trying to like predict an election, that means I'm subtracting two different estimates that I've made, right? This one has 3% error, this one has 3% error, which means my margin, right? Which is what everyone talks about. The difference between these two candidates or these two parties is then gonna be like approximately

00:08:51 - And that's unavoidable, perfect world of polling. And so once you realize that, it's like what are we doing right when we're trying to like poll these races that we think are tied because there's some inherent unavoidable, you know, we can't get much closer than that just in a perfect world unless I happen to get lucky or correct in my waiting assumptions, which I don't know if they're true or not. And so, you know, the polls happen to get it right in general, but like given the, the difficulty of the task, like that's something, that's something you can bank on kind of going forward.

Understanding the Limitations of Polling Accuracy

00:09:23 - of going forward is kind of appreciate that like a poll can tell you if the race is close or not, right? But the idea that you can extract information about whether or not a one point change is meaningful or, or just kind of randomness or the result of a pollster making a slight decision like that is well beyond, like I can't determine that and I'm an expert, right? And so I think the way to do that is just kind of step back and say, look, a poll can tell me if it's close or if it's, if it's kind of, you know, not close. And I, you know, I think we do a disservice and we try to think we can do more than that even if we happen to be lucky in some of the past

00:09:54 - And so why that matters, right? Is that once you recognize that what polls can do, like the difficulty is that you think of pre-election polls or if they've missed it again, they understated Trump by two to three percentage points in 2020. In 24 they understated by four percentage points in 2020. This is all garbage. Like I'm, you know, these pollsters dunno what they're doing, which is I think unfortunate and kind of also not exactly the right conclusion. I mean, 'cause the right conclusion is that it's kind of remarkable to me, right? That given all these difficulties, I can talk to 800 people

00:10:26 - that's held by hundreds of millions of people. Now that's not enough to call Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or any kinda super close races, but it's a remarkable testament that I can, on such small data I can get in the ballpark. And so long as what you're trying to use polling for is like in the ballpark, then I think you're okay. So a lot of public opinion polling is not trying to predict elections. A lot of public opinion polling is trying to say what's the approval of the government? What's the support for a given policy? And there the answer whether it's like 47

The Value of Polling in Democratic Representation

00:10:58 - Because like you look at that and you, the qualitative conclusion you draw from that, it's like it's close, right? It's evenly split or is there a large support for this policy or a large support for this government or not? And so in so far as we're not trying to make decimal point comparisons, right, which are far more precise than what we can actually do, then I think polling gives us useful information. And I think it's important to hold onto that because like absent that, what do we have if we don't have polling, which is kind of small, the democratic where we can help elevate the voices of just kind of normal people who happen to answer the phone, right?

00:11:29 - at least, at least, you know, then we're left to what? Social media people, well their voices are kind of loud and kind of unrepresented. People who are pro pro protesting the streets, again loud but not reflective of the general population. And so if we throw away polling right, because of, of small misses in pre-election polling, then I think that's real unfortunate. 'cause then we have no ability to assess kind of how what the governments are doing, reflect the opinions of the people or kind of what an election even means, right? So we just had an election in the United States, right? President Trump was elected. What does that mean? Right?

00:11:59 - of vote count doesn't tell you what that means. It doesn't tell what people were thinking, right? And therefore kind of what the potential mandates are if, if that exists among the public, but only a poll can kind of do that. And so long as you, you kind of appropriately account for like, yeah, it's gonna get me in the ballpark, but it's not gonna get me like 47.3%, right? It's, it's not able to do that of a precision. I still think that information is useful and helps us guide what's going on. So example, the polls were all kind of, you know, they all understated Trump this year, but they were all saying it's gonna be a close race, right?

Understanding Polling Uncertainty in Elections

00:12:32 - for people going into the race like, look, you know, you didn't see a giant outcry about what happened because like people were kind of got their brains wrapped around that this could go either way, right? You could see Vice President Harris winning, you could see President Trump winning and, and that's what all the polls were saying. So even though they understated Trump, you know, in another sense they helped, they, they ballpark kind of range of plausible options or kind of opportunities there. And I think that's helpful for kind of allowing kind of the, you know, the transition of power and kind of helping people understand, you know, what's going on. And so again, it's, it's out about putting a proper level

00:13:27 - And I don't think, to be honest, like we do a good job presenting that or kind of explaining that to people because, you know, we like to know the score. We like to know who's up and who's down and we want things, you know, precise black or white binary in the world. But the reality is it's, it's called kind of mushy and gray and you have to be a little bit comfortable in the ambiguity and say, well, we're kind of in the ballpark, right? But that's still being in the ballpark is better than, you know, not being in the ballpark at all.

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