2024 Pre-Election Political Polls | POLL - Trump would have had 7 point lead over Biden

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 6K
  • Views: 144K
  • Politics 
treblkickd said:
I just read through a few things that popped up, and what I saw was no clear consensus - some papers seem to argue that betting markets are better predictors (e.g., your link, and this), others argue that they are worse (example, example), some argue that it's unclear what performs better (example) or that they contain the same information (link). So in short, I don't see how any sensible person could survey that literature and come to the conclusion that betting markets are more accurate than polls.

As someone who's career is built around figuring out ways to measure things robustly, one thing that has irritated me in the post-538 era (these poll-conglomerating "models") is that there is never an honest discussion about actual information content. Or to put it another way, what, if any, significance is there to someone's fancy model assigning 55% "probability" for one candidate to win? It doesn't take a fancy model to quickly assess that the range of plausible outcomes for the US presidential election has 2 possibilities. The simplest model one could build would then be a coin flip - in fact I've just constructed such a model! I even ran 10,000 simulations of the election, and guess what, it's a real horse race with Kamala Harris winning 50.7% of the time, and Trump winning 49.3% of the time. How in the world would one ever construct a statistical test to robustly show that my coin flip model is less predictive than the NYT or 538 or whatever simulator giving one candidate a 53% chance and the other a 47% change. Do you know how many elections for which you'd have to have actual data (results) to be able to distinguish in a statistically robust way that the NYT/538 models are fundamentally different from a coin flip? The answer is a lot, but we just get the one.
Click to expand...
This is a very strong 8th post. Coming from a man with 1000% more posts than you no less.
 
farce© said:
Trump voters are anything but silent.

If anything I suspect there are a lot of secret Kamala voters out there. They are women in red districts too afraid to tell their husbands, friends, or congregation they are voting for Harris.
Click to expand...
Polling average 270 to win, RCP, and 538 on Nov 2, 2020:
Biden 51.4%, trump 43.5%, margin 7.9%
Actual results:
Biden 51.3%, trump 46.8%, margin 4.5%
Actual results had 3.3% more trump voters than polled, even though Biden's numbers were basically identical. I can't prove it, but if they were still silent trump voters in 2020, they likely will be again.

Biden was ahead in the polls by 7.9%, won the popular vote by 4.5%, and still only won the tipping state of Wisconsin by 20,000 votes, or 0.63%. Yes, polling has adjusted, and yes, Dobbs happened, but trump is on the ballot in 2024 and he wasn't in 2022. I believe in Keyser Soze, and I believe in the silent trump voter. I'm not trying to be a doom and gloom buzz kill, but if Harris isn't doing better in the polls by election day, I'm not sure I have enough bourbon for election night.
 
Last edited:
treblkickd said:
I just read through a few things that popped up, and what I saw was no clear consensus - some papers seem to argue that betting markets are better predictors (e.g., your link, and this), others argue that they are worse (example, example), some argue that it's unclear what performs better (example) or that they contain the same information (link). So in short, I don't see how any sensible person could survey that literature and come to the conclusion that betting markets are more accurate than polls.
Click to expand...
But yellowjacket assured us that betting markets were better than polls, multiple times. No, he didn't provide any evidence or data to back up his oft-repeated claim and even appeared to take umbrage at being asked to provide the same. Then something was mumbled about people not wanting to hear about something they disagree with and that he'd "played that game before." Now's your chance, yellowjacket...
 
treblkickd said:
I just read through a few things that popped up, and what I saw was no clear consensus - some papers seem to argue that betting markets are better predictors (e.g., your link, and this), others argue that they are worse (example, example), some argue that it's unclear what performs better (example) or that they contain the same information (link). So in short, I don't see how any sensible person could survey that literature and come to the conclusion that betting markets are more accurate than polls.

As someone who's career is built around figuring out ways to measure things robustly, one thing that has irritated me in the post-538 era (these poll-conglomerating "models") is that there is never an honest discussion about actual information content. Or to put it another way, what, if any, significance is there to someone's fancy model assigning 55% "probability" for one candidate to win? It doesn't take a fancy model to quickly assess that the range of plausible outcomes for the US presidential election has 2 possibilities. The simplest model one could build would then be a coin flip - in fact I've just constructed such a model! I even ran 10,000 simulations of the election, and guess what, it's a real horse race with Kamala Harris winning 50.7% of the time, and Trump winning 49.3% of the time. How in the world would one ever construct a statistical test to robustly show that my coin flip model is less predictive than the NYT or 538 or whatever simulator giving one candidate a 53% chance and the other a 47% change. Do you know how many elections for which you'd have to have actual data (results) to be able to distinguish in a statistically robust way that the NYT/538 models are fundamentally different from a coin flip? The answer is a lot, but we just get the one.
Click to expand...
A couple of those are really cool studies. One gives a method for using all polls from 200 days before the election that outperforms betting markets. Another looks at other methods like sentiment analysis of social media posts to outperform polls and prediction markets. That's new.
 
hedge said:
But yellowjacket assured us that betting markets were better than polls, multiple times. No, he didn't provide any evidence or data to back up his oft-repeated claim and even appeared to take umbrage at being asked to provide the same. Then something was mumbled about people not wanting to hear about something they disagree with and that he'd "played that game before." Now's your chance, yellowjacket...
Click to expand...

Read the posted articles and tell us what you think. There is a fair amount of consensus that prediction markets beat election markets but there are a couple of studies that point out some flaws to that collective wisdom.

One study he cited noted that a rolling average of polls, read not the way we do it today, outperforms prediction markets. That's really cool.

Another study really needs to be dumbed down to yellowjacket level because it's talking about how polls and prediction markets influence the Canadian and Mexican stock markets. That seems pretty tangential but it's behind a paywall so I can't read the whole thing. If treb dorks out on that with an explanation, I'll dork out right there with him. I'd love to understand that one.

And another study notes that prediction markets emulate the polls which yeah, that makes a ton of sense. That's probably most of the information these bettors are using to make their predictions.

And note, I am not discounting that really well researched post. There is less consensus than I thought about election markets versus polls and treb expertly pointed that out. It still seems to me that prediction markets are better than polls as we commonly use them but I wouldn't bet on it.
 
Last edited:
nycfan said:
Click to expand...

The Harris campaign is well-prepared to close this election over the final 2 weeks. From that article, the campaign officials don't seem worried so much as conservatively optimistic given the circumstances.

Her team has the right mentality: Focused, innovative in their engagement and running full sprint through the finish. You can't ask for more.
 
Gender data in other swing states (I was surprised to discover extent to which states vary — I knew Alaska is an outlier (it is 51.7% male, which is not as extreme as I expected until you compare to the U.S. average of 50.5% female) but it is one of ten states with more men than women, while Southern states are disproportionately represented among states with the highest rate of more women than men, DC being the heaviest female population at 52.8% female)

Population Distribution by Sex | KFF

www.kff.org www.kff.org

Note, however this 2022 Census data is limited to civilian, non-institutionalized residents — all the men in jail are not accounted for (the military folks are supposed to be accounted for as residents of their state of residence at enlistment, but that means that polling of a state like NC with a lot of military bases may underrepresent the male vote if the electorate assumptions are based on census data);

turnout by gender below is based on CNN exit polls in 2020, but will try to find a more accurate source based on final election tallies

GA - 51.8% female (56% female electorate 2020)
NC - 51.7% female (56% female electorate)
PA - 50.8% female (53% female electorate)
MI - 50.6% female (54% female electorate)
AZ - 50.5% female (52% female electorate)
NV - 50.0% female (52% female electorate)
WI - 49.9% female (50% female electorate)

FL - 51.1% female (including them for abortion amendment)
 
Last edited:
nycfan said:
Gender data in other swing states (I was surprised to discover extent to which states vary — I knew Alaska is an outlier (it is 51.7% male, which is not as extreme as I expected until you compare to the U.S. average of 50.5% female) but it is one of ten states with more men than women, while Southern states are disproportionately represented among states with the highest rate of more women than men, DC being the heaviest female population at 52.8% female)

Note, however this 2022 Census data is limited to civilian, non-institutionalized residents — all the men in jail are not accounted for (the military folks are supposed to be accounted for as residents of their state of residence at enlistment, but that means that polling of a state like NC with a lot of military bases may underrepresent the male vote if the electorate assumptions are based on census data)

GA - 51.8% female
NC - 51.7% female
PA - 50.8% female
MI - 50.6% female
AZ - 50.5% female
NV - 50.0% female
WI - 49.9% female

FL - 51.1% female (including them for abortion amendment)
Click to expand...
Which gender is more motivated to turnout and vote ? That is the question.

www.rawstory.com

'Not on my watch boys!' CNN host stunned by liberal expert's election advice

CNN anchor Kate Bolduan roared disapproval at a political analyst Tuesday as he offered snarky advice to liberal voters ahead of Election Day.Panelists Van Jones, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Scott Jennings, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, were both scolded...
www.rawstory.com www.rawstory.com
 
Last edited:
BTW, voting preferences by party affiliation in 2022 nationwide from Pew Research:

IMG_3299.jpeg
I did not realize the early turnout of Democrats was skewed this heavily by mail-in votes, though on a national basis that could simply be that Blue States out west have had mail-in options longer and so the mail-in numbers are skewed by those blue states where all or large proportions vote by mail.
 
Gift Link --> https://www.wsj.com/politics/electi...4?st=qPUFiz&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

The Pollsters Blew It in 2020. Will They Be Wrong Again in 2024?​

Survey firms are trying to learn from their mistakes after the biggest polling error in 40 years​


"... Courtney Kennedy of the Pew Research Center has tracked the changes pollsters made in recent years to address accuracy, and she is cautiously hopeful of improvement.

“I wish I could say the polling industry has done these three things to give us all very high confidence that polls won’t systematically underestimate Trump’s support again,” said Kennedy, who supervises survey design and data science at Pew. “But that’s not the case. Pollsters have tried very hard to correct for the error, but there’s no silver bullet.” ..."

... The industry’s analysis of 2020 polling, conducted by a select committee of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, was full of dour news. Pollsters had understated Republican support not only in the presidential race but in elections for Senate and governor. No method of polling—by phone or online—emerged as the most reliable, leaving few clues for improving surveys. Pollsters had fixed problems that skewed some results in 2016, such as talking with too few working-class, white voters, Trump’s most supportive group. But new sources of error had apparently turned up.

In the aggregate, the panel said, polls overstated support for Biden by 3.9 percentage points in the national vote in the final two weeks of the campaign. That was a departure from 2016, when national polls were among the most accurate in 80 years but state-level polls failed to detect signs of Trump’s eventual victory in the Electoral College.

In 2020, the final, pre-election Wall Street Journal poll of the presidential race, conducted at the time with NBC News, found Biden leading Trump by 10 percentage points. The result came close to indicating actual Biden’s level of support—he won 51.25% of the national vote, compared with 52% in the survey—but understated Trump’s ultimate 47% share by about 5 percentage points. ..."
 
(cont'd)

"... Tranter [Scott Tranter, data science director at Decision Desk HQ, a political data firm,] says he expects polling error to be about the same magnitude as in the recent past—but he doesn’t know if it will understate support for Trump, or for the Democratic nominee, as polls did in 2012, during then-President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

“It’s like a roulette wheel,” Tranter said. “Just because it showed up red the last two times doesn’t mean it’s going to show up red this time.”

Pollsters are still debating whether Trump himself exerts a unique force on voters that pollsters haven’t yet navigated. While state polls were off-base in 2016 and national polls erred in 2020, polling was considered generally accurate in the midterm elections of 2022, when Trump wasn’t on the ballot.

Some in the survey field have thought that Trump supporters are less trustful of civic institutions and so less likely to take surveys, while others might be wary of telling pollsters their true choice of candidate. Kennedy said there are signs in some recent polls that Trump voters in fact aren’t masking their voting intention, at least this year: People registered as Republicans have been as likely as registered Democrats, if not more so, to take some surveys.

“He’s become so normalized,” she said of Trump, “so I’m hoping that the measurement of people’s voting intention has become more accurate.” "
 

Republicans Eat Into Democrats’ Early Voting Advantage​

More than 15 million Americans have already voted, as both parties scour data for clues on turnout​


"Democrats have a clear edge in early voting so far, but Republicans are embracing the practice of casting their ballots before Election Day more than they have in past election cycles, despite former President Donald Trump sending mixed signals on the issue.

... Democrats also account for 49% of returned ballots compared with 31% for GOP voters. That is a smaller margin than around the same time four years ago—in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic—when Democrats made up nearly 52% of returned mail-in ballots compared with 24% for Republicans. ...

... Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who maintains the early voting numbers for Election Lab, said the data so far shows more of a shift in how Republicans are casting their ballot rather than an indication of how the party is performing.

McDonald said the Republicans who have voted are likely high-propensity voters who had already made up their minds and decided not to wait until Election Day this year. “This appears to be a shuffling of the furniture,” McDonald said. ..."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top