{"id":4923,"date":"2010-10-19T22:08:08","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4923"},"modified":"2010-10-19T22:08:08","modified_gmt":"2010-10-19T22:08:08","slug":"dont-be-shocked-by-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/dont-be-shocked-by-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t be shocked by polls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You all know about the issues of <em>weighting<\/em> samples to achieve representativeness. In polling this is an art. But even if you get to representativeness,\u00a0<strong>depending on the average sample sizes the polls themselves will exhibit a distribution of outcomes about a mean.<\/strong> Therefore with a large enough sample space of polls you can find one at a tail of the distribution of outcomes. Today with the proliferation of polling this is getting to be more and more of a problem. Look at this musing by Joshua Micah Marshall: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talkingpointsmemo.com\/archives\/2010\/10\/a_feingold_comeback.php?ref=fpblg\">A Feingold Comeback?<\/a> He notes: &#8220;A new independent poll has Feingold down by only 2 points.&#8221; A thickly polled state will come back with a range of results. Even non-internal polls (which are often curated for maximum effect on the press, and so shouldn&#8217;t be trusted) will exhibit a normal distribution of results, so if you want to hinge an argument on <em>one <\/em>poll, it is fast becoming a trivial task to find that poll to satisfy your needs. In 2008 the <a href=\"http:\/\/wizbangblog.com\/content\/2008\/10\/31\/things-that-make-polls-go-doh.php\">less intelligent set of conservative bloggers<\/a> expressed ideologically motivated skepticism of polls (grounded in the fact that they were too stupid to know any better). What excuse does the self-proclaimed &#8220;reality based&#8221; party of pointy-headed intellectuals have in 2010?<\/p>\n<p>Whatever happens, 2012 will be even worse. The number of polls is going to up, and verbally oriented bloggers and reporters will cherry-pick outliers to produce whatever narrative they wish to roll out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You all know about the issues of weighting samples to achieve representativeness. In polling this is an art. But even if you get to representativeness,\u00a0depending on the average sample sizes the polls themselves will exhibit a distribution of outcomes about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/dont-be-shocked-by-polls\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4924,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions\/4924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}