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'Cellphone Effect' Could Skew Polling Predictions
Ponca City writes "A good deal of polling data suggest that Republicans may win the House of Representatives in today's mid-term elections. However, Nate Silver writes in the NY Times that there are several factors that could skew the election, allowing Democrats to outperform their polls and beat consensus expectations. Most prominent is the 'cellphone effect.' In 2003, just 3.2% of households were cell-only, while in the 2010 election one-quarter of American adults have ditched their landlines and rely exclusively on their mobile phones, and a lot of pollsters don't call mobile phones. Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied. Another factor that could skew results is the Robopoll effect, where there are significant differences between the results shown by automated surveys and those which use live human interviewers — the 'robopolls' being 3 or 4 points more favorable to Republicans over all. It may be that only adults who are extremely engaged by politics (who are more likely to be Republican, especially this year) bother to respond to robocalls. Still, when all is said and done, 'more likely than not, Republicans will indeed win the House, and will do so by a significant margin,' writes Silver. 'But just as Republicans could beat the consensus, Democrats could too, and nobody should be particularly shocked if they do.'"
I'm sitting this one out, and possibly 2012 as well. Voting for the guy or gal that lies the least still means I'm supporting a liar. The very nature of politics nowadays automatically means someone with enough clout to run for election is unfit to serve...
Living With a Nerd
The party which wins will be the party which is more successful in hacking electronic voting machines.
Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied.
Umm...isn't the point of demographic weighting to factor in "unweighted" demographics like this?
Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white -- all Democratic demographics...
And all far less likely to vote than old, white people.
Maybe the Democratic GOTV effort will surprise me, but I was less than impressed with the "historic" turnout among young people in the '08 election. The vast majority of them still are either too apathetic or too cynical to bother voting.
And will those first-time African American voters from '08 still turn out even though Obama is not on the ballot this year? Will Latinos turn out even though the Democrats did nothing on immigration reform?
American public: "Wow, those Republicans sure fucked everything up. Better vote Democrat this time."
T+4 years: "Wow, those Democrats sure fucked everything up. Better vote Republican!"
T+8 years: "Wow, those Republicans sure fucked everything up. Better vote Democrat this time."
Umm, people? We have other choices, you know. The extremes of *any* party are going to be nut-jobs, but we can probably do a lot better to let the D's and R's set a few rounds out.
But we won't, will we. Because voting is supposed to be about thinking with other people's brains and voting with the flock.
Republican preference has been consistently underrepresented in polls for as long as I remember- and cellphones didn't suddenly appear in the last year.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Actually I would like to see the polling banned.
It introduces way to much bias into the process. People tend to not want to throw away their vote so once a canidate is in the lead people tend to want for them or not for them instead of the person that they think is the right one.
That and they should keep primary results a secret until every state votes.
It is funny but I had a long drawn out discussion about the value of randomizing ballots and bias. This bias is probably a million times greater than who is first on the ballot.
Since everybody has the right to a secret ballot make it illegal to ask people how they will vote or have voted!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope
I don't vote. Two reasons. First of all it's meaningless; this country was bought and sold a long time ago. The shit they shovel around every 4 years *pfff* doesn't mean a fucking thing. Secondly, I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around – they say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain', but where's the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.”
-George Carlin
And even if it weren't WHY THE FUCK IS POLLING ALL THEY TALK ABOUT? Paying attention to the news will tell you 1. Who is running 2. How likely they are to get elected 3. If they are having sex with someone who isn't their spouse 4. What their opponents are saying about them, in order of most to least information.
Not on there: their history or what they will actually do (if anything) when elected. Who do I vote for, the guy who's likely to win? Because that's about the only thing you'll get from the news.
How a candidate is polling is of interest to the candidate and his staff, and to people who already know who they are voting for to either say "Ha ha, we're going to win!" or "Damnit, we're going to lose!" To everyone else, it should be trivial information.
in your words, is the perfect cattle of an authoritarian country, the perfect double plus good citizen
the simple truth of the matter is, if you wait for your perfect candidate, you will never vote. and even then you will find something wrong with them. every election, ever held, and will ever be held, will simply be a choice between the lesser of two evils. no one is pure, no one doesn't have lies spread about them
the real criminal is you: you who hold your candidates to impossible standards, and then complain no one meets those standards
what you are really doing is rationalizing your desire to absolve yourself of responsibility for the society you live in. you are detaching yourself from any crimes that happens in your society, absolving yourself of guilt: "i didn't choose our leaders"
and in a country composed of people who think like you, sits the happiest tyrant
go to work slave. don't ever complain again. even when they increase your workhours and decrease your salary. not your fault, right?
you, all by yourself, no one else to blame, have given up the right to complain, by choosing not to do the ONE TINY THING that guarantees that you live in a free country: VOTE
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Way to keep an open mind. God bless America.
That's not an issue with polling, it's an issue with using a terribly flawed voting system (first past the post). Fix the system and it would fix quite a few political problems. For example, preferential voting eliminates the need for strategic voting as you've described above.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Most polls use the turnout numbers for last election as a baseline for potential voters, then ask questions to determine to which party the respondent belongs. If polls spit out just the raw numbers, they'd be more than useless.
Your worries about skewed numbers are mostly unjustified....it's been 50+ years since the "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!" days. (And younger, urban voters don't vote in mid-term elections anyhow.)
There's only so much normalizing you can do with an increasingly skewed sample before you're just making things up.
I'm afraid quoting George Carlin isn't relevant to me. This attitude of "I didn't vote, so I'm not responsible for who gets elected" is complete BS. You are just as responsible for the people who voted for them because you are a part of the silent majority qho sits around on the hole all the time and is annoyed by who actually gets elected. Get up off your hole and vote who you think is the best candidate, if you don't like your options get involved and perhaps even run yourself. But this attitude of "I'm above all that" is pie the sky at best and dangerous at worst
There is no -1 disagree
Who can really say. Counter-example:
I'm doing graduate research involving monitoring students in computer science labs. Today the instructor asked how many students were planning to vote. Around 15% raised their hands. At least that many had a stunned look in their eyes as though they didn't even realize it was election day.
Young people may be more likely to own only cell-phones and tend to be much more progressive, but it seems as though they may be a lot less likely to vote. Most of them probably live within a few blocks of where they can vote and it's a nice day out so there's not much of an excuse.
I follow Silver's site as he often writes a lot about the statistics behind his model, which I usually find more interesting than the results or political commentary, but if these observations are true, why the hell aren't they built into his model? If these effects actually exist and skew polling results, why haven't they already been taken into consideration? Also, what effects exist that skew the results in the other direction and what evidence supports them?
This article feels sloppy, especially when compared to the usual high quality from fivethirtyeight. Let's wait another twelve hours and then we'll have a pretty good idea about the actual outcome and can start speculating what might have caused it to deviate from the expected results so that the prediction model can be adjusted accordingly.
Complete wishful bullshit.
Amazing how much rationalization is going into analyzing (and trying to explain away) polling data that suggests a Democratic bloodbath. What, too much "change" in the air now?
Why do you even bother trying to pay attention? Who cares what analysts have to say about any of this? Why does everyone put so much stock into figuring out what may happen when they can just shut the hell up for a minute and watch what actually does happen? The election is going to happen regardless of what talking heads on TV do, so why bother with the predictions?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
-1 Idiocy
Whether statistical models are good predictors of future outcomes should be a topic near and dear to every slashdotter. Bringing this up in the context of a midterm election is not "wishful thinking"-- it's an interesting problem.
The difference between your anecdotal story and the one in the article is that the effect the author is talking about is a statistical one, and he cites evidence to support his position. Regardless if the outcome of the current election cycle, if real, this is an effect that polling organizations will have to account for.
What you're suggesting is that we make it illegal to study the correlation between who candidates are popular and who is declared the winner. It seems like quite a big leap away from open democracy... Sure, there could still be polls afterwards... But there would be far less incentive (political, financial, etc.) after someone has already been declared a winner. I really don't consider that such a good idea.
Rather, the system of "Unless your vote is the decisive one, it doesn't matter" (it doesn't help to vote for someone who would win regardless of it or to vote for someone who won't win anyways) is broken. Where I live, we use D'Hondt method (and have quite a lot more parties) so voting is much more likely to have some effect.
As a result of the 2000 election, hundreds of thousands of people died.
And to you, it's the same as a TV show.
Why, exactly, should it surprise you when we're left with only lousy politicians?
So you only want to vote for the person you think is going to win?
I voted this morning. Most of the people I voted for were never mentioned on the news, in the papers, and most people don't even know about them. I did my research, found the person I liked and I voted for them even though they are likely to win. Waste of time? I think not. Every time I vote that's one more little bit of the percentage of being recognized.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
When you vote, you legitimize the process.
I've never understood this argument.
The people in power never cared that only 40% of the people vote and in fact it shows that if no one bothered to come to polls to vote against them, then it most likely occurs to them that they should keep doing the things they way they want to.
I mean... People who can't be bothered to vote won't likely be bothered to go into the streets to protest either, much less take arms up against a legitimate government.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm
the results of the 2000 elections were decided by a razor slim margin. meaning those who chose not to vote had a real effect: they helped bush win
and if you say "politicians are all the same": tell me with a straight face gore would have invaded iraq
those who don't care, or don't want to be involved, are just as guilty as everyone else for the sorry state of the world, if not more so
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So you want your vote to be a certified winner and you're not going to vote until it happens?
The republicrats have definitely bought you.
. So a two-party system isn't really all that bad, as far as maintaining balance goes and keeping things from getting too corrupt.
Wait, I get a choice between the party that wants to take all my money and give it to business, and the party that wants to take all my money and spend it on social services, and this is balance? Neither seems particularly concerned about collateral damage.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As a result of the 2000 election, hundreds of thousands of people died.
And to you, it's the same as a TV show.
I was assured as a result of the 2008 election, we would end two wars, bring em all back home, close our concentration camp in Cuba, and implement a REAL federal medical plan. Nothing happened. Correct, to me its the same as a TV show, its gonna turn out the same regardless if I "participate" or not.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I firmly believe not everyone should vote. Stupid people, for instance. The king that are often interviewed in man-on-the-street interviews who can't tell you who the President is, Speaker of the House, and other basic information people should have before voting. Those people should stay home. That's why I always hope for rain on voting day, it keeps stupid and lazy people at home. Unfortunately, the rain called for my area is holding off.
You were assured by whom? Obama always made it clear that he supported the Afghanistan war but not the Iraq war. He's fulfilled his promise to withdraw from Iraq in a rapid by responsible way. He's also fulfilled his promise to invest more in the Afghanistan war and try to turn it around. The left in the U.S. must be deaf because Obama was loud and clear. Obama also tried to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay but he was blocked by Congress. He's President not Dictator, so there are limits to what he can do. He did not promise to set the terrorists free so what alternative did Congress give him? Now if you don't vote you will prove to the Republicans and conservative Democrats that they were right to stop Obama from closing Guantanamo and right to oppose him on health care and everything else he's tried to do. As a non-voter you will have the same effect on the outcome as a conservative Republican voter. You are what the GOP and the Tea Party hope for. Instead of slow progress we will regress.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
. Nothing happened.
Correction: nothing positive happened. Plenty of happened: we've got troops in foreign lands where we have 'officially' ended the wars and combat operations entirely; we're wasting millions of US taxpayer money trying Gitmo combatants in civil courts; we've dedicated trillions to a healthcare system which will bankrupt employers and be unaffordable to citizens.
As an added bonus, we've also nationalized the banks and one of the largest automotive makers in the country. We've inflated the dollar to the point of being worthless and have continued to accelerate the rate of borrowing from China.
I've seen this TV show, except I saw an earlier visioning of it. I think it had something to do with Germany or Italy in the 1930s - I can't quite remember. (Argentina in 2000 is a good enough example as well.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Democrats kept spending and spending in the time of a recession--what did they expect would happen? Most people, in tough times, tighten their belts and save their money. They saw that their government wasn't doing that and felt that their leaders weren't listening to them.
But this is what all of their economists are telling them they are supposed to do to help the economy recover. And of course, were the republicans in power, they would be doing the same thing.
I think the do care now. The two parties push "Everyone should vote" because all of the people that wouldn't have voted but are convinced to vote even thought they don't know any of the candidates, are going to fairly randomly vote for one of the two names they hear the most.
Everyone votes becomes white noise that drowns out third parties. Of course if uninformed voters could be convinced that their vote is most effective by voting against BOTH parties via a third party, then we would see improvement.
We propped up the banks and that automaker. All are on schedule to buy themselves back out. It was a temporary measure, and you're being disingenuous by stating otherwise. Furthermore, neither industry is nationalized -- control is still private, though with oversight; and private competitors remain in the marketplace.
What? That's an extraordinary claim, considering inflation has been markedly low the past several years considering the shape of the economy. Inflation was higher under Bush than it has been under Obama.
What? The deficit is smaller under Obama than it was under Bush. This means less borrowing from creditor nations.
You sir, are chock full of either delusion or lies. I don't care which it is, but it would be nice if you stopped spewing your misinformed/lying bullshit.
One other note...
Disembark from the crazy train, dude. Stop listening to the demagogues like Beck who spew this nonsense.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It's funny you say that!
Personally, I'd vote Democrat in a snap if they weren't so goddamn pushy about wanting to give my tax money to people I have moral problems supporting.
If the Democrats would stick to getting us out of GATT/NAFTA/WTO, rebuilding American industry, and did more than talk about busting up the vertical monopolies and non-taxpaying overseas megacorporations, I'd be all for them.
Instead, all I hear from the Democrats round here is how I'm somehow morally obligated to let my tax money support thieving, lying illegal aliens and the babies they drop (who have, because they keep running off on the bills, caused two hospitals in my area to shutter their maternity wards completely).
It is a really stupid, crazy thing in the US system: if a friend of mine from overseas is here on a tourist visa and goes into labor early, her kid doesn't become a citizen. But if the kid of some lying, thieving lawbreaker pops on US soil, somehow that kid becomes a citizen.
It's a mad, mad world.
The President isn't actually all that powerful, but what he does have can be used effectively.
The problem is, the past few have been supremely good at drawing attention - "Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it", and "anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job", respectively. (Thanks to the late, great Douglas Adams).
What you really want is divided government. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." The whiny partisan asswipes will scream "waah gridlock", but the BEST thing we can have is for only those things which both parties manage to agree on happening. Remember, 99% of the real business of governing happens not in the President's office, but instead in Congress. In this respect the most powerful person in our government is the Speaker of the House, who can single-handedly ensure that a proposed bill never sees the light of day.
Where it goes to pot is when the majorities in Congress, Senate, and then the President are all from the same party.
Look at the times we've been fucked in the last three decades. Jimmy Carter had a Democrat congress and nearly doomed us all. Bill Clinton, for his first two years, almost did what Obama has done to us now. Most of the people on this site are probably too young to understand how truly horrible both of those time periods were.
Shrub 43 is an oddity. For his first couple years, there was a major crisis. Then, "dealing with" that major crisis, his advisers convinced him and Congress to run around spending like drunken sailors.
When it came time to be a lame duck, Shrub 43 may as well have been a democrat. Count up the number of vetoes he issued once the Democrats took congress following the 2006 elections and it's pretty clear he was nothing but a joke. Effectively, Pelosi and Reid were running the country even before they got an official rubber-stamper put into the White House.
Of course, this kind of crap is why George Washington warned us about forming political parties at all in his farewell address: political parties effectively take the checks and balances system and make it meaningless unless the people are smart enough not to let one party get hold of House, Senate and Presidency all simultaneously. It's a damn shame nobody listened to him.
According to wikipedia you are incorrect. Please forgive the formatting, I dont think slashcode will let me drop a table in my comment.
Fiscal year Value % of GDP
2001 $144.5 billion 1.4%
2002 $409.5 billion 3.9%
2003 $589.0 billion 5.5%
2004 $605.0 billion 5.3%
2005 $523.0 billion 4.3%
2006 $536.5 billion 4.1%
2007 $459.5 billion 3.4%
2008 $962.2 billion 6.6%
2009 $1785.6 billion 12.5%
2010 $1471.0 billion (est.)10.0%
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Certainly by not linking to a politically biased blog with known credibility issues.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
My god, you are delusional. LOOK up when the economy in the US crashed. Bush was in power. In fact Obama was elected because people couldn't believe the mess Bush had made of things. And now they get the republicans who created the mess back because Obama can't fix decades of mis-management in two years.
The US economy was fucked over by reagonomics were the intrests of wall street and short term speculators have ruined the American industrial base leading to more and more Americans contributing nothing to the economy. Basically, the US has since WW2 played the "lets pump up economy X and sell them our movies". It worked for the EU, it worked for Japan, ir worked for Korea. Then they tried it with China and forgot that China is far far larger. Sony went from a crap copy maker to a company that beat US companies down. Korean car makers do better then US companies, but they are as nothing to the growing industrial might of China. Once China stops like Japan and Korea to copy US tech and make its own (In Japan, nobody thinks the iPhone is the best, there are far better phones available already) and in China already you can get very decent LOCALLY designed gadgets that start adding their own tech.
Meanwhile Detroit is a ghost town and it ain't the only one. All so wall street could score a quick win by stripping American business for their last penny and fire every American worker and then claim employment is good because families can only survive holding down a double job per person.
And you blame congres... my god. You sure get the wool pulled over your eyes. Wall Street controls the economy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
First - FORD pardoned Nixon. Carter didn't. So your whole first paragraph is raw idiocy.
Obama has not wreaked this economy upon us, the Bush administration and the prior Congress did.
"The prior Congress" - you mean the one Obama was a part of as a US Senator, when Obama voted for every last one of the fucked-up policies that said Congress passed and Shrub43 signed...
Clinton fixed a broken economy,
Please, do tell me what alternate reality you came from. The economy was already on the mend well before Clinton got elected, just too late to save Bush41.
Between being scared to death of Hillarycare and reeling from Clinton's tax hikes, the economy took another nosedive until 1994. And that we can blame squarely on Clinton and the Democrats he had in Congress.
Voting for someone who doesn't stand a chance of winning is equivalent to not voting in every practical measure.
False. For several reasons.
First - to illustrate the logical fallacy of your argument, let me test its corollary: e.g., "By voting for the winner, my vote is worth more." By "voting for a winner," one of the following must be true, either your vote is necessary for the winner to win, or it isn't. If your vote isn't necessary for the winner to win, then you are voting for someone who is already going to win, so they don't need your vote, therefore your vote is worthless. If your vote IS necessary for the winner to win, then whoever your vote goes to will win, right? So why then are you letting someone tell you that the other candidate(s) can't win?
This brings me to the second reason
Second -- Who tells you that someone "doesn't stand a chance of winning?" How is this determined? Someone else decides it, that's how. So essentially, you're letting someone else decide who you can or can't vote for. The justification for the determination of "doesn't stand a chance" -- not enough funding, not a member of a major party, not the right skin color -- is irrelevant. The fact is, you are allowing someone else to limit your choices artificially, and often to the exclusion of a candidate whose positions are much closer to your own that the ones who do "stand a chance."
And there are not only logical failures to the argument, but ethical ones.
Third -- Third party candidates don't get invited to debates, and don't get press coverage because they "don't stand a chance." But if they did get exposure, and were allowed to participate in debates, they might have a chance. Therefore, it becomes self-fulfilling, to the point of unfairness... both to the candidates and the people who share their views.
And the most fundamental reason of all... IT MISSES THE POINT.
Fourth -- if you're really concerned about who "stands a chance" and who doesn't, you're basing your vote on the wrong reason... voting is not about "being on the winning team" or "casting the vote for a winner." It's not a competition for the voter. You're supposed to vote for the person who expresses positions you believe in, who you believe will do their job the best -- it's not a bet at a casino. Unfortunately, this fallacy is extremely common in American politics -- people feel like they should cast their vote for the one who will allow them to claim they voted for the winner, as if they were rooting for a team in the world series, so they can go to work the next day and feel affirmed by saying "I voted for the winner, and you voted for the loser. You LOSER."
Gahh - this last one makes my blood pressure rise. Because as a direct result, we get candidates who are perpetually campaigning, who feel as if winning elections is the only purpose to politics, and therefore the policies they enact are juvenile, foolish, and unwise... and as a result we get massive spending, eternal tax cuts, unbalanced budgets, kneejerk prohibitions ("OMG someone died eating a hotdog sideways, ban hot dogs!"), and now as it turns out, Big Lies repeated over and over again with no examination or critical analysis by the media.
If everyone voted their conscience, then we wouldn't be in this fucking mess. Bottom line.
I can see the fnords!
" What's so wrong about wanting the person who will be representing me to actually represent me?"
you are only one constituent among many, and you are representing a colossal narcissism in your words. you are holding your vote hostage to an impossible demand, the only effect of which is that person who will actually represent you, will represent less of you than was possible if you only voted. and they will represent you, in reality. i know that in your lofty ivory tower you think you can retire from the world. how selfish of you. you don't represent the high road or a sense of nobility, you represent foolishness
you want the person who is the closest to your ideology. even if very far away, and only slightly closer than the other candidate
if you live forever, and see an infinite number of candidates, they will never represent you, ever, in any democracy, for all possible societies, for all future times. they will represent THEIR CONSTITUENTS, which will be at best an average of the ideologies of their district, and that will never overlap with only you
you are a vain narcissist, and the only real world effects of your choice not to vote is to doom whatever you believe to less representation, and therefore less realization
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it