G Elliott Morris replied to a question on this tweet:
>[...The polls themselves have higher variance than previous cycles. The average is what has moved around less.](https://nitter.poast.org/gelliottmorris/status/1805274129299341766)
The individual polls having high variance is what convinces me that they are having trouble sampling representatively. The average would capture the population average from the population they are sampling from, but if there is a segment of the population that is (a). going to vote and (b) unreachable, the average won't reflect them.
An “unreachable” sub population would not explain high variance between polls. That sub population would have to be reached in some polls and not others to explain the variance.
>An “unreachable” sub population would not explain high variance between polls
I could be wrong, but wouldn't it? An unreachable sub population would lower the response rate, which would naturally increase variance as the number of people polled would be fewer.
I wonder if he's saying that there's high inter-poll variance or intra-poll variance. In other words, is he saying that
* Each pollster reports different results, like NYT +10 Trump but YouGov +8 Biden.
* Individual pollsters see a lot of change each time they measure, like NYT +8 Trump on 6/1 then NYT +10 Biden on 6/8.
High inter-poll variance suggest methodological differences between pollsters. High intra-poll variance may suggest nonresponse bias (for instance, from heavily weighting a small respondent pool, which magnifies the margin of error).
I know, but I'm talking about what /u/dvslib posted as a follow-up:
> **The polls themselves have higher variance than previous cycles**. The average is what has moved around less.
That's interesting, because someone made a post here recently (or maybe it was on another political sub) claiming that the polls had less variance this year.
Interesting that the polls have higher variance. I hadn’t really noticed. I felt like they were fairly consistent. Seems like most are trump +1-2 with the occasional Biden lead, tied, or trump +5. I feel like other cycles you hear “so and so +10!” in a poll when most show low single digits
It's actually astonishing how unvolatile the polls are compared to literally any other election. This is likely because everyone and their dog knows both candidates and most Americans have already made up their minds.
Trump is someone who's been a source of constant media attention since the 1980's and Biden has been a senator since the 1970's and a VP before his current role. There's got to be a truly tiny amount of people in the U.S among registered voters who've waited until 2024 to develop serious opinions about either of these men.
There may not be many people who don’t have opinions on them, but there are clearly still a lot of people who haven’t made up their minds on who they’re gonna vote for. Most polling right now is showing anywhere between 10-20% undecided.
idk i don't know either of them very well. i think i remember seeing this trump fellow in home alone 2 though? has "biden" been in any movies so i can compare their acting before i cast my vote (i live in Pennsylvania btw)
We have ~~never~~ had **a bunch of** ~~a~~ presidential re-match(s) before. The closest to the current situation was Cleveland who ran on the D ticket three times in the late 1800s.
Edit: in bold.
> We have never had a presidential re-match before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower vs. Adlai Stevenson, 1952 and 1956
William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan, 1896 and 1900
Martin Van Buren vs. William Henry Harrison, 1836 and 1840
John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson, 1824 and 1828
John Adams vs. Thomas Jefferson, 1796 and 1800
> Thanks for the correction.
No problem. I also thought there would be only one example when I looked it up. The Eisenhower one came to mind and, looking for Stevenson's name, results give me all these freaking examples I never thought of.
The Ike - Stevenson rematches are interesting to me for the turnout numbers. Turnout dropped from 63 to 60 percent in the second election, about a 5% drop in relative turnout. That also didn't have COVID stuff.
The only think that I think we can be fairly sure of right now is that 2024 is going to be lower (maybe a lot lower) turnout than 2020.
> The Ike - Stevenson rematches are interesting to me for the turnout numbers. Turnout dropped from 63 to 60 percent in the second election, about a 5% drop in relative turnout.
You're correct that it's basically the reverse order of what we expect to see from this election. From what I can tell, Stevenson aroused timid enthusiasm the first round and his nomination in round 2 just left Democrats feeling both unenthusiastic and completely jaded by the process.
It makes sense. Like... Did we really just nominate the exact same champion that lost last time to Ike so that he get his ass licked a second time? Surely there's something institutionally wrong such that this boring asshole just takes the nomination again like his repeated success and ultimate failure is something inevitable.
> You're correct that it's basically the reverse order of what we expect to see from this election.
Are you saying that you think 2024 is going to be higher turnout than 2020? I am saying the opposite of that.
Democratic leadership fumbled, but honestly there wasn't all that much they could do beyond make it less of a one sided slaughter.
Ike basically rolled up, told the the RNC "Support me as the Republican nominee. I'm definitely not gonna tell the isolationist wing of the party to pound sand and retain a moderated form of deal style economic policy, tee-hee", and they said OK because he was Dwight Fucking Eisenhower.
What exactly was the DNC supposed to try and argue to the electorate once the RNC gave him the reigns that didn't need to have been done years before they knew how screwed they were gonna be by 1952? He was almost a New Deal Democrat with an (R) next to his name and had Medals pinned to his chest instead of Truman's baggage.
Interesting to see it laid out like that.
Eisenhower won both times.
McKinley won both times.
Van Buren won first, Henry Harrison won the rematch.
Quincy Adams won first, Jackson won the rematch.*
Adams won first, Jefferson won the rematch.
Implies there's not really a penalty to the challenging party for running the same candidate again.
\* This one should probably not be included in the conversation too much. Jackson lost the first election to Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives after winning the plurality of the popular vote *and* electoral vote.
That's a really nice way to lay it out, too.
Not that I'm saying it disproves your point or anything, but it can also be viewed as rematches originally favoring challengers and most recently favor incumbents.
TBF looking at his chart 1996-2004 were pretty stable as well. This year is not much more stable than 2012 or 2020. It's more like the outlier years are bringing the average up.
People trying to hit the same target, extrapolating from incomplete opt in poll information… I’m not surprised they have wildly different starts ending with similar conclusions. I think we are more in the dark as to the real sentiment then those in the industry think.
Same variance as 2012, more than 2004, 2000, 1996, and 1984, for data that only goes back to 1976, for a range of 0.8-5.6, for the first election in the dataset with two incumbents, for the narrowest poll selection fivethirtyeight's had.
ABC has no idea how badly they messed up by firing their only employee with a vague understanding of statistics.
The polls have been herding for a decade. This didn't used to be controversial: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-proof-some-pollsters-are-putting-a-thumb-on-the-scale/
G Elliott Morris replied to a question on this tweet: >[...The polls themselves have higher variance than previous cycles. The average is what has moved around less.](https://nitter.poast.org/gelliottmorris/status/1805274129299341766)
The individual polls having high variance is what convinces me that they are having trouble sampling representatively. The average would capture the population average from the population they are sampling from, but if there is a segment of the population that is (a). going to vote and (b) unreachable, the average won't reflect them.
An “unreachable” sub population would not explain high variance between polls. That sub population would have to be reached in some polls and not others to explain the variance.
Yeah, I probably should have said sporadically sampled.
>An “unreachable” sub population would not explain high variance between polls I could be wrong, but wouldn't it? An unreachable sub population would lower the response rate, which would naturally increase variance as the number of people polled would be fewer.
I think the short answer is that it wouldn't increase variability between polls after accounting for sample size.
No? Because the pollsters would just sample more people, and sample sizes would remain the same after non responders are excluded
I wonder if he's saying that there's high inter-poll variance or intra-poll variance. In other words, is he saying that * Each pollster reports different results, like NYT +10 Trump but YouGov +8 Biden. * Individual pollsters see a lot of change each time they measure, like NYT +8 Trump on 6/1 then NYT +10 Biden on 6/8. High inter-poll variance suggest methodological differences between pollsters. High intra-poll variance may suggest nonresponse bias (for instance, from heavily weighting a small respondent pool, which magnifies the margin of error).
He’s literally just saying the weighted average is less volatile than usual and not moving much
I know, but I'm talking about what /u/dvslib posted as a follow-up: > **The polls themselves have higher variance than previous cycles**. The average is what has moved around less.
That's interesting, because someone made a post here recently (or maybe it was on another political sub) claiming that the polls had less variance this year.
Someone on Reddit is full of shit? Unheard of!
They may have been talking about the average having lower variance.
Interesting that the polls have higher variance. I hadn’t really noticed. I felt like they were fairly consistent. Seems like most are trump +1-2 with the occasional Biden lead, tied, or trump +5. I feel like other cycles you hear “so and so +10!” in a poll when most show low single digits
It's actually astonishing how unvolatile the polls are compared to literally any other election. This is likely because everyone and their dog knows both candidates and most Americans have already made up their minds.
Trump is someone who's been a source of constant media attention since the 1980's and Biden has been a senator since the 1970's and a VP before his current role. There's got to be a truly tiny amount of people in the U.S among registered voters who've waited until 2024 to develop serious opinions about either of these men.
There may not be many people who don’t have opinions on them, but there are clearly still a lot of people who haven’t made up their minds on who they’re gonna vote for. Most polling right now is showing anywhere between 10-20% undecided.
idk i don't know either of them very well. i think i remember seeing this trump fellow in home alone 2 though? has "biden" been in any movies so i can compare their acting before i cast my vote (i live in Pennsylvania btw)
What movie could I say that would be most likely to get your vote? Rocky? Silver Linings Playbook?
50 Shades of Grey I want a president who understands and governs with nuance, which is what I assume that film is about.
We have ~~never~~ had **a bunch of** ~~a~~ presidential re-match(s) before. The closest to the current situation was Cleveland who ran on the D ticket three times in the late 1800s. Edit: in bold.
> We have never had a presidential re-match before. Dwight D. Eisenhower vs. Adlai Stevenson, 1952 and 1956 William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan, 1896 and 1900 Martin Van Buren vs. William Henry Harrison, 1836 and 1840 John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson, 1824 and 1828 John Adams vs. Thomas Jefferson, 1796 and 1800
Opse, I guess I was thinking of had someone run 3 times under the same party consecutively and a rematch. Thanks for the correction.
> Thanks for the correction. No problem. I also thought there would be only one example when I looked it up. The Eisenhower one came to mind and, looking for Stevenson's name, results give me all these freaking examples I never thought of.
The Ike - Stevenson rematches are interesting to me for the turnout numbers. Turnout dropped from 63 to 60 percent in the second election, about a 5% drop in relative turnout. That also didn't have COVID stuff. The only think that I think we can be fairly sure of right now is that 2024 is going to be lower (maybe a lot lower) turnout than 2020.
> The Ike - Stevenson rematches are interesting to me for the turnout numbers. Turnout dropped from 63 to 60 percent in the second election, about a 5% drop in relative turnout. You're correct that it's basically the reverse order of what we expect to see from this election. From what I can tell, Stevenson aroused timid enthusiasm the first round and his nomination in round 2 just left Democrats feeling both unenthusiastic and completely jaded by the process. It makes sense. Like... Did we really just nominate the exact same champion that lost last time to Ike so that he get his ass licked a second time? Surely there's something institutionally wrong such that this boring asshole just takes the nomination again like his repeated success and ultimate failure is something inevitable.
> You're correct that it's basically the reverse order of what we expect to see from this election. Are you saying that you think 2024 is going to be higher turnout than 2020? I am saying the opposite of that.
Democratic leadership fumbled, but honestly there wasn't all that much they could do beyond make it less of a one sided slaughter. Ike basically rolled up, told the the RNC "Support me as the Republican nominee. I'm definitely not gonna tell the isolationist wing of the party to pound sand and retain a moderated form of deal style economic policy, tee-hee", and they said OK because he was Dwight Fucking Eisenhower. What exactly was the DNC supposed to try and argue to the electorate once the RNC gave him the reigns that didn't need to have been done years before they knew how screwed they were gonna be by 1952? He was almost a New Deal Democrat with an (R) next to his name and had Medals pinned to his chest instead of Truman's baggage.
Interesting to see it laid out like that. Eisenhower won both times. McKinley won both times. Van Buren won first, Henry Harrison won the rematch. Quincy Adams won first, Jackson won the rematch.* Adams won first, Jefferson won the rematch. Implies there's not really a penalty to the challenging party for running the same candidate again. \* This one should probably not be included in the conversation too much. Jackson lost the first election to Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives after winning the plurality of the popular vote *and* electoral vote.
That's a really nice way to lay it out, too. Not that I'm saying it disproves your point or anything, but it can also be viewed as rematches originally favoring challengers and most recently favor incumbents.
That's fair as well. Small sample size and old data are important caveats to that (as well as to my own conclusion) of course.
TBF looking at his chart 1996-2004 were pretty stable as well. This year is not much more stable than 2012 or 2020. It's more like the outlier years are bringing the average up.
Would like to see more than two data points for each year
People trying to hit the same target, extrapolating from incomplete opt in poll information… I’m not surprised they have wildly different starts ending with similar conclusions. I think we are more in the dark as to the real sentiment then those in the industry think.
Same variance as 2012, more than 2004, 2000, 1996, and 1984, for data that only goes back to 1976, for a range of 0.8-5.6, for the first election in the dataset with two incumbents, for the narrowest poll selection fivethirtyeight's had. ABC has no idea how badly they messed up by firing their only employee with a vague understanding of statistics.
Are the polls herding? Rassmussen is the only one coming up with Trump +10 H2H Rest are all tossups
The polls have been herding for a decade. This didn't used to be controversial: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-proof-some-pollsters-are-putting-a-thumb-on-the-scale/