Wednesday 9 November 2016

Opinion palls

 

Last night I went to bed expecting a Clinton victory, because although opinion polls can be wrong, the margin of Democrat advantage exceeded the apparent margin of polling error. To further confirm my ineptitude at forecasting, I had also thought Remain would win over Leave in the Brexit referendum, for the same reason.

Today I reflect on some basic psychology, which is that attitudes do not translate directly into actions and, in a further complication, expressed attitudes differ from actual attitudes. This is particularly the case where the attitude is considered socially reprehensible, such as coveting one’s neighbours ox, or wife; being pleased when a rival fails to get a promotion; resenting a newcomer; or disliking someone because a superficial characteristic grates on your nerves.

Of course, I have always known, but often forgotten, that there is a gap between what is thought and said, and a bigger gap between what is said and done.

I also know, but often forget, that public opinion polls habitually use smaller samples than required for proper representativeness,  and that the pollsters then “correct” their raw results using a set of assumptions gained from trying to correct previous errors (turnout rate, for example) whilst also looking over their shoulders at what most other polls are saying, so as to not be the odd one out. Come to think of it, the pollsters’ fascination with finding out what other people are thinking infests the poll companies themselves, and they are guided by what other poll companies are thinking. Polls of polls simply aggregate and confirm the group errors.

Will attention continue to be paid to opinion polls, given their inability to spot what the public really intend to do? The growing awareness that polls are used to influence opinion as much as to measure it has become painfully obvious. They are not trustworthy, and flourish most when people cannot work out their own opinions for themselves. No, I do not want to ban them. I just want to get out of my habit of paying them much attention.

Now, here is a quick check of the predictions I made yesterday against Edison Research exit questionnaires:

Most of all I wonder how years of education, which supposedly indicates an ability to evaluate arguments, will correlate with actual votes, and thereby to test the popular supposition that the better educated voters will shun the Republican candidate. I assume that sex and age will have a minor influence, but the latter might show bigger differences, with older voters more cynical and more likely to vote Republican. Race should not matter at all, because if America is a melting pot then policies not polities should prevail. If races vote en bloc (say more than 65% in one direction) then the woe betide the republic, which will become disunited genetic states.

Years of education

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Post-graduates voted Democrat, as expected. However, I did not consider income:

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There was some effect of low income boosting Democrat votes, but those with income above $50,000 were not swayed by necessity, and voted according to political preferences. Perhaps the well-educated post graduates took the sorts of degrees which did not boost their income. Psychology, anyone?

Here are the sex differences:

image

In fact, much bigger than I imagined would be the case.

image

The age differences were also bigger, though I got it half right, in that older voters were more likely to vote Republican than those younger than 45, and particular than those younger than 30.

As regards race, you will see that I put forward a null hypothesis I did not believe in, but wanted to test. I used to follow the majority in describing the US as a melting pot, but have come to think of it as only a dispersal ground.

image

Black voters are overwhelmingly Democrat, and can be considered a bloc vote. Hispanic/Latinos and Asian also meet precisely my predicted bench mark of 65% to be considered bloc voters. The “other” voters look as if they have been somewhat considering the actual policies, as do the White voters, but both are not that far off the 65% boundary I plucked out of the air as an indicator of race-based voting. Blacks to an extraordinary degree, and Hispanics and Asians to a large degree jumped left, Whites jumped right.

So, is the summary of this election “it’s race, stupid”? If so, I also predicted a Disunited Genetic States. I doubt it. Governments habitually do less than they promise, and have less influence than they imagine. The great flywheel of habit usually reigns supreme.  Usually.  I will consider this matter further after a good night’s sleep.

15 comments:

  1. http://www.buchanobserver.co.uk/news/aberdeenshire-business-owner-wins-presidential-election-1-4282745

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  2. "So, is the summary of this election “it’s race, stupid”?"

    For the Rust Belt (West Virginia to Wisconsin) it was the hope of jobs. You really have to see the abandoned mills and depressed towns to understand it.

    another fred

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    Replies
    1. Correct. I have not seen it, except in some news programs.

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    2. Can't be worse than in the Ruhrgebiet or in Welsh coal mining towns.

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  3. What do you make of the measures of increases (by race) little arrows on the right - with Asians showing an 11% increase, Hispanics 8%, and Blacks 7%. This is one of the real stories of the election - the stability of the white vote - while other races moved quite substantially...

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  4. Marriage was also a major dividing line, with an 8% point Trump gap and 5% Clinton gap.

    Religion was only a bloc vote (71%) for Jews among the major religions, but a surprising, -- no, downright miraculous mass turnout of the Amish for Trump may have handed him Pennsylvania with its crucial 20 electoral votes. Someone made an analogy to the Ents marching on Isengard in the Lord of the Rings. Apparently they saw something kindred under Trump's surface flashiness, most likely that he was the clear anti-war candidate.

    Blacks voted Clinton at the same rate that registered Democrats did. They likely exceeded the overall Democrat rate in voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

    Pollsters, pundits and journalists and educators were some of the only professional groups that likely voted at higher percentages for Clinton than Blacks did. That the polls were wrong was no accident, it's clear from looking at the sample skews toward every group likely to favor Clinton, and the way those skews kept increasing over the course of the election.

    Trump supporters generally wish to disemploy these inimical ideologues, and aren't having any of this "mercy" and "forgiveness" nonsense, with attitudes spanning the spectrum from "tar and feathers" to "fire and the sword". Many of these dead-enders still seem to think that if they hurl the same insults a few more times that it will finally work, and it isn't getting them any sympathy from Trump supporters. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian, pro-open borders candidate is also in bad odor: if most of his voters had gone for Trump, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico and possibly some others would likely have gone Trump, and if Johnson had done just a bit better it would have cost Trump the whole election.

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  5. Apparently the USC poll was the only one that polled the same people over time. They were interviewed on NPR yesterday since they were the only poll that correctly predicted the results. Nice explanation of the differences here: http://akinokure.blogspot.fr/2016/10/poll-shifts-after-events-are-illusory.html

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  6. Yesterday two pals emailed me to congratulate me for my prediction a week ago over coffee that Trump would squeak a win. But I'm not sure that I did predict that - maybe I was the only person they'd talked to recently who said that (i) Trump might win, and (ii) Hillary thoroughly deserved to lose.

    Interesting that those two points should morph in their minds into "Trump will win". I suspect they had otherwise being talking to people from an unhealthy monoculture.

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  7. By the way, a noticeably calm and sensible analysis of who whom:

    http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/11/perhaps-not-a-trump-win-but-a-clinton-loss-the-trap-of-reasoning-from-a-price-change.html

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    Replies
    1. After going from network to network I finally wound up at CNN (spit) because of the man handling the maps and past election data (masterfully). His name was/is John King or Keene or some such.

      another fred

      At any rate he demonstrated quite well that rural counties in the Rust Belt were going Republican that had previously been solid Democrat. There are not that many African Americans in these counties, certainly not ghetto types, maybe some of the African Americans who voted for Trump, but not many.

      At any rate, contrary to your link, there was a shift in voting patterns in these specific Rust Belt areas. That shift won Trump the Electoral College.

      It was kind of fun to see the conniptions Wolf Blitzer was having as he explained what was happening.

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    2. Name is John King. I've not watched CNN for years, but this man definitely knows what he is doing.

      another fred

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  8. I accept the accolades of the handful of enlightened people who read this blog, but must admit that I claimed here the evening preceding the election that Trump would win easily. He won, but not easily...that still needs to be worked out , but it seems that the Rockerfeller Republicans deigned to register their vote for the Donald.The white working and middle class, male and female, turned out , especially in the Rust Belt, to propel Trump into the White House....

    The polls were not " wrong"--they were rigged....check the internals...Democrats and HRC-friendly demographics were massively over represented in the samples to gin up a ridiculous pro-Clinton advantage to discourage Trumpers and suppress turnout .It was popular on social media to dissect, deconstruct these hegemonic polls utilized by the ruling class to throttle the hopes of the striving , thrifty working class and their more well-to-do middle class brethren. These efforts failed. We took our country back.

    Some claimed that the polls were off because few wanted to admit they were voting for Trump !! Ridiculous.There was/is no timidity about proclaiming ones preference for the Donald--his campaign and his positions on the issues were enthusiastically embraced and vigorously promulgated...everyone proselytized for Trump...many joined Twitter just to help propel him to the White House---those who believe otherwise have fallen victim either to their own insulated , pseudo-intellectual enclaves or to the preening leftist, corrupt, colluding, gaslighting media--or both.

    As per the demographics--
    Blacks vote en mass for the Democrat Party...95% is typical...Trump getting 12% is considered outstanding....It appears that blacks did not turn out for Hillary-- she generated no enthusiasm among any demographic, for obvious reasons.

    Gender-- if only males voted , no Democrat would have been elected in the last 50 years...women always favor Democrats...Trump did better among women than the typical Republican

    White men voted overwhelmingly for Trump...white woman also voted for Trump by a small margin.

    It was a great day for America.....conservative radio host/actor/vocalist Robert Davi opened his show with "God Bless America", as sung by the immortal Kate Smith, the version from the 40s, that cracking, popping sound from some aged vinyl rendition or perhaps taken from one of her inspiring radio broadcasts, back during the 40s, when America was abroad, pummeling the dreaded Hun, rescuing the hapless Brits, making the world safe for democracy...


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  9. Older voters are significantly more likely to vote than younger voters.

    All politics are local. The Republicans now hold the presidency, both houses of congress, and the vast majority of state legistatures and governors. State governments are in charge of redistricting.

    The Democratic party is in danger of becoming a regional party.

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