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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.'"
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.
Poll Phone Operator: Excuse me, sir or ma'am, do you have a free minute to answer a few simple questions anonymously about who you plan to vote for?
...
Phone Respondent One: Well, let's see, what would Jesus do?
*Poll Phone Operator hangs up the phone and puts a check mark next to the Republican candidate*
Poll Phone Operator: Excuse me, sir or ma'am, do you have a free minute to answer a few simple questions anonymously about who you plan to vote for?
Phone Respondent Two: Sorry, what did you say? It's cloudy and my solar powered phone is cutting in and out.
*Poll Phone Operator hangs up the phone and puts a check mark next to the Democratic candidate*
Poll Phone Operator: Excuse me, sir or ma'am, do you have a free minute to answer a few simple questions anonymously about who you plan to vote for?
Phone Respondent Three: Yes I do, just let me put NASCAR on mute, I can talk and watch at the same time.
*Poll Phone Operator hangs up the phone and puts a check mark next to the Republican candidate*
Poll Phone Operator: Excuse me, sir or ma'am, do you have a free minute to answer a few simple questions anonymously about who you plan to vote for?
Phone Respondent Four: I'm so sorry but I just put on a 180 gram vinyl Arcade Fire album and I fear that if I remove the needle prematurely I would
*Poll Phone Operator hangs up the phone and puts a check mark next to the Democratic candidate*
Poll Phone Operator: Excuse me, sir or ma'am, do you have a free minute to answer a few simple questions anonymously about who you plan to vote for?
Phone Respondent Five: Fuck you and fuck the establishment you rode in on.
*Poll Phone Operator hangs up the phone and puts a check mark next to the Independent candidate*
My work here is dung.
You should vote, if only to vote for a write-in or third party candidate. This election is as much about the "Two Parties" screwing things for "Joe Sixpack" in favor of their corporate overlords. The problem is that we don't have much of a choice from the two major parties.
So, vote, but send a message. If third parties get more than 20% combined, there can be no call for "mandate" from either of the two parties.
Voting for the lessor of two evils is a logical fallacy. There are more than two evils running for most posts.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Some background is in order here; this is not a typical piece for Silver. He did a companion to it a couple days ago, giving the reasons the GOP could overperform. These are just "what if" stories, designed to flesh out the message he's been driving for some time now, which is that this election has unusually high uncertainty. He isn't engaging in hackery and claiming everything will be fine for Democrats...
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
"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
In many cases, I agree. In 2000 I voted green even though I didn't agree with half their agenda, I've been disenfranchised by moving around for several years since then. But I just voted strait democrat in this election because the republicans in my area decided to go with comic book villain style candidates.
Rick Scott (R, FL gov) = Lex Luthor
Libertarians are run by big money. There is nothing big money likes better than total deregulation and a government whose only function is to protect the property of the haves from the have nots. You are a willing tool of folks like the billionaire Koch brothers, who fund libertarian and tea party candidates who promise to destroy the only thing keeping them in check: government regulation. Thankfully, by voting libertarian you are just throwing your vote away, the majority of Americans can see through the scam and would never vote diametrically opposite their true interests.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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
-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.
Voting for third-party candidates (unless you can rally enough votes to actually win, which is structurally unlikely without changing the electoral system first) is unlikely to change that.
This is rather well demonstrated to be false from the fact that, in the rather rare individual elections in which third party candidates have won more than 20% of the vote, the winning major party candidates have still claimed mandates.
For the most part, the whole point of negative campaigning is to get people who might otherwise vote for the other major party candidate to, in rough order of preference, vote for the candidate on whose behalf the negative ad is prevent, not vote at all, or vote for a third-party candidate. There's a reason why major parties often are found channeling support to "independent" or third-party candidates whose natural appeal overlaps that of their major-party opponent.
Voting for a third-party candidate doesn't "send a message" to the major parties, except the message that their negative campaigning against eachother is working exactly as designed.
No, its not. It may or may not be good tactics, but its certainly not a logical fallacy.
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.
Two points:
1. Moderate incumbents are being dumped by the major parties. Ending up with major party support is no indicator of sanity, either.
2. Has anybody (other than pundits from the major parties) proven that "the vast majority of 3rd part(sic) candidates" are the lunatic fringe? How much time have we spent studying their views, talking to them?
Can we please go back to car analogies?