So I’ve been thinking about how the pre-election polling results caused a completely wrong prediction.
And I have two ideas as to why:
1. Better turnout among Republican voters vs Democrat voters
2. Polling results that included many liars.
#2 in particular makes me think of the LA Times/USC poll that consistently showed a better Republican result than most other polls.
Apparently with that poll, they used the same sample of people, took what they said, and then made adjustments to those numbers using actual voting results from the previous election.
I suspect (and the polling industry must be suspecting this more now) that people lie about how they’re gonna vote far more than anticipated.
Another interesting tidbit from this article:
“poll adviser Dan Schnur said the electorate should learn lessons from the poll — principally that it is important to measure the intensity of voters’ commitments, along with which way they intend to cast their ballots.”
Definitely something interesting to think about.