by Tyler Durden
Oct 23, 2016 11:50 PM
Earlier this morning we wrote about the obvious sampling bias in the latest ABC / Washington Post poll that showed a 12-point national advantage for Hillary. Like many of the recent polls from Reuters, ABC and The Washington Post, this latest poll included a9-point sampling bias toward registered democrats.
“METHODOLOGY – This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats – Republicans – Independents.”
Of course, while democrats may enjoy a slight registration advantage of a couple of points, it is nowhere near the 9 points reflected in this latest poll.
Meanwhile, we also pointed out that with huge variances in preference across demographics one can easily “rig” a poll by over indexing to one group vs. another. As a quick example, the ABC / WaPo poll found that Hillary enjoys a 79-point advantage over Trump with black voters. Therefore, even a small “oversample” of black voters of 5% could swing the overall poll by 3 full points. Moreover, the pollsters don’t provide data on the demographic mix of their polls which makes it impossible to “fact check” the bias…convenient.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-23/new-podesta-email-exposes-dem-playbook-rigging-polls-through-oversamples
I understand your point, but all surveys have a bias.
If you look at Rasmussen, a polling company that has a slight Republican bias (they say the race is “neck and neck between Trump and Clinton, despite Trump’s manager saying “we’re behind’), they don’t even publish their Democrat-Republican-Independent mix. They simply say “Rasmussen Reports determines its partisan weighting targets through a dynamic weighting system that takes into account the state’s voting history, national trends, and recent polling in a particular state or geographic area”. At least ABC is letting us know what their mix/weighting is.
Okay. Let’s unpack this.
Podesta was referring to internal polling, which all campaigns do. These are not public polls. Over-sampling certain groups is a way for campaigns to study them more closely. This is a fake scandal. Legitimate public pollsters have no incentive to over-sample or skew their polls in any direction.
Polls are used to mold public opinion face facts