So, what happened with the polls?

[NHawk19]

I mean, I imagine people really don't want to be called a racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, misogynist, ageist, ableist, etc., person just because they wanted to vote for Trump over Hillary. So, when asked, they probably said they were voting for Hillary or were undecided. Given the willingness of the left to relentlessly go after people they disagree with on social media*, why trust a voice over the phone to keep your answer confidential?

This is it. People sided with Trump for economic reasons and got tired of being called racist, facist etc. by the supposedly tolerant left side.

Just like the left side isn't all the extreme left. The right isn't all extreme right. The right just got tired of being labeled that way every time they wanted to have a reasonable discussion.

 

[The Incredible Hulk]

I am not certain if I said it here, or somewhere else. But this is NOT hindsight.

There were massive oversampling of Democrats. Some oversampling is fine like a D+3/4, but D+8-13 is ridiculous. This was the norm in all the polls. Obama didn't get these ridiculous levels of oversampling. They pollster actually thought more Democrats would turn out for Hillary than Obama. After pissing off Bernie fans no less too. Are you kidding me?

Secondly, if any of you paid any attention the Republican primary, you would know Trump outperform in all forms of polling except online ones. The worse ones are land line polling.

oversampling in stats really doesnt mean that you purposesly sample more from one group than another. Oversampling is simply trying to identify more about a particular sub-group in a sample, but then when you put it back into the original sample it still carries the same weight.

For instance, if I sample 500 likely voters, and 50 of them are Hispanic (1/10) but I want to know what H men and H women are likely to do. Assuming equality, 25 each isnt really a big enough sample, so what I do is I then "oversample" and poll 300 Hispanics for their traits. However when I go back to the original sample I still only weight the results of those 300 hispanics as 1/10 in the original sample so their characteristics aren't overstated in the sample. As long as weighting is done properly, oversampling shouldnt skew a dataset one way or the other.

this was something dumb that people freaked out about during the Wikileaks emails because they assumed a literal interpretation of a term.

 

[TheVileOne]

Polls are hot garbage and people should stop believing in them and putting their stock in them.

 

[Thundercrack85]

This is it. People sided with Trump for economic reasons and got tired of being called racist, facist etc. by the supposedly tolerant left side.

Just like the left side isn't all the extreme left. The right isn't all extreme right. The right just got tired of being labeled that way every time they wanted to have a reasonable discussion.

I can never tell if you people are just lying to us, or yourselves. Either way it's unconvincing.

Listen conservatives, when a bunch of people who are a different race than you tell you you're being racist, you should probably stop and think about that.

But hey, you sure proved them wrong by electing this race-baiting demagogue. Good on you!

 

[ouroboros]

I can never tell if you people are just lying to us, or yourselves. Either way it's unconvincing.

Listen conservatives, when a bunch of people who are a different race than you tell you you're being racist, you should probably stop and think about that.

But hey, you sure proved them wrong by electing this race-baiting demagogue. Good on you!

The complaints would be more compelling if there weren't so many race-baiting demagogues among the groups accusing the conservatives of racism.

 

[Kyle]

(1) People lied and due to arrogance probably under polled; however (2) because Hillary did win the popular vote -

(2) The polls validated Hillary winning, thus inspiring Trump supporters to vote (because if they didn't - Trump has a huge chance of losing) and reassuring those who are against Trump that they don't need to vote or can vote third party cause Hillary's got this.

I can't find it online, maybe someone can, but the graph showing the amount of people who showed up this time in comparison to every prior year was staggering.

It basically looked like 2004 2008 2012 2016 = | | | .

It was that much of a clearly visible difference.

In short, arrogance and apathy. Basically, sociology played a really huge contributing factor. This is a clear cut Icarus story.

 

[Shikamaru]

Were the polls really that uneven? Every poll I saw prior to the "grab 'em by the *****" leak had them about tied with one another. He went down after that, but then he was back up in the polls a week before the election when Comey reopened Hillary's case.

Then again, I was only keeping up with the independent media polls. Corporate media might be a different story.

 

[Kyle]

Were the polls really that uneven? Every poll I saw prior to the "grab 'em by the *****" leak had them about tied with one another. He went down after that, but then he was back up in the polls a week before the election when Comey reopened Hillary's case.

Then again, I was only keeping up with the independent media polls. Corporate media might be a different story.

Hillary was constantly being sold as the clear cut winner.

Trump was portrayed as the big dumb orange monster, while Hillary as the one who just stood by nodding as cool as a cucumber.

Hell, there were many people cracking jokes about Trump winning like it was as likely that a cow could fly over the moon.

It was an arrogance that a lot of people bought into. I would say Hillary winning propaganda was as widespread and blinding to what was going on as the pro 9/11 patriotism flooding the markets selling us that the best idea was to go to war. There were even Hillary action figures, she was packaged and sold and those who were anti Trump bought into it - those who were pro Trump it terrified (thus the lying and secret whisperings) and inspired to go out and vote. By the time the democrats woke up to the fact that they needed to inspire people/beg people to vote, it was already too late they had already sold the nation on a concrete win and it just felt like extra fan fare. It wasn't depicted as a campaign rather one big celebration against a Democrat and "haha the orange monster." This is why everyone was shocked.

 

[Shikamaru]

This is it. People sided with Trump for economic reasons and got tired of being called racist, facist etc. by the supposedly tolerant left side.

Just like the left side isn't all the extreme left. The right isn't all extreme right. The right just got tired of being labeled that way every time they wanted to have a reasonable discussion.

It's a huge misconception that political correctness created Trump. Or that it was the dominant factor in creating Trump.

Trump is primarily the natural result of 40 years of neoliberal policies mixed in with 20 years of Far Right propaganda. Political correctness was the tertiary factor at best.

 

[summerteeth]

Were the polls really that uneven? Every poll I saw prior to the "grab 'em by the *****" leak had them about tied with one another. He went down after that, but then he was back up in the polls a week before the election when Comey reopened Hillary's case.

Then again, I was only keeping up with the independent media polls. Corporate media might be a different story.

That's the thing the polls were correct and definitely within margin of error, but they totally miscalculated how that would play out at the state level. They were projecting Trump to get less Electoral Votes than Clinton ended up actually having.

 

[Thundercrack85]

It's a huge misconception that political correctness created Trump. Or that it was the dominant factor in creating Trump.

Trump is primarily the natural result of 40 years of neoliberal policies mixed in with 20 years of Far Right propaganda. Political correctness was the tertiary factor at best.

Honestly I think it had as much to do with Hillary Clinton being immensely unpopular and being perceived as corrupt and people in the rust belt being sick of the status quo. Hillary was the embodiment of the establishment.

 

[Thundercrack85]

The complaints would be more compelling if there weren't so many race-baiting demagogues among the groups accusing the conservatives of racism.

Race-baiting demagogues?

 

[Shikamaru]

Honestly I think it had as much to do with Hillary Clinton being immensely unpopular and being perceived as corrupt and people in the rust belt being sick of the status quo. Hillary was the embodiment of the establishment.

That's why I said Trump was a result of the neoliberal policies. The Establishment is who enacted those policies for the past 40 years or so.

 

[Osiris-Rex]

That's the thing the polls were correct and definitely within margin of error, but they totally miscalculated how that would play out at the state level. They were projecting Trump to get less Electoral Votes than Clinton ended up actually having.

Hillary did win the popular vote nationwide. She won by a 1.5% margin which was what the Real Clear Politics average had for her. So the polls were correct about that. It was the state polls that the pollsters missed.
But they do less state polls so there was more room for error with the state polls than the national polls.

 

[Mysteryman]

Polls are hot garbage and people should stop believing in them and putting their stock in them.

Amen!

 

[SV Fan]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...2hdVns073R68EZx4SfCnP4IGQf8/htmlview?sle=true

Clinton just took a 1.5M lead int he popular vote today(she already at 1.7M so I guess a bunch of those California votes just came in today) so she is currently at 1.3%. When all i said and done Clinton will probably have a lead of 2M+ creeping on 2.5M votes which would put her close to 1.7-1.8%.

Given that the average of polls was 3% the margin of error nationally was rather close.

I think more then bad polling, it was the way polling was reported that was at fault

 

[E.NormusJohnson]

Hell, there were many people cracking jokes about Trump winning like it was as likely that a cow could fly over the moon.

It was an arrogance that a lot of people bought into.

A lot of people in the MSM and those who live in Cali, NYC maybe. Much different story if you lived out in the "fly over" part of the country.

 

[Kyle]

A lot of people in the MSM and those who live in Cali, NYC maybe. Much different story if you lived out in the "fly over" part of the country.

Arrogance from those anti Trump, as well as the media who have been vocally anti Trump.

 

[dnno1]

Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, I think if everyone is honest, we can all agree that this election was kind of a shocker. Why were the polls so off? And what we can we do about them?

The polls weren't off.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 500,000 ballots cast. That's what the polls were showing. The thing is that we do not choose our county's leaders by popular vote. That's why when you get this close to election day the state to state polls are more important since they figure into the electoral college count.

 

[The Incredible Hulk]

National polls were pretty close overall and well within their margin of error. They reflected Clinton with a 1-2% point lead and that's about what she has in the popular vote.

The polling issues really come down to the the state polls, which is what should give you a better feel for how the Electoral College will shake out. In states like PA, the polls weren't reflective at all of the voting in the state.

 

[dnno1]

National polls were pretty close overall and well within their margin of error. They reflected Clinton with a 1-2% point lead and that's about what she has in the popular vote.

The polling issues really come down to the the state polls, which is what should give you a better feel for how the Electoral College will shake out. In states like PA, the polls weren't reflective at all of the voting in the state.

@The Incredible Hulk, the Traflagar group had Trump ahead by 1 percentage point in Pennsylvania a day before the election. You can see that on Real Clear Politics (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/state/). If you look at each estate that he was ahead and count up the electoral votes, you will see that he wins based on that (but note that they are still counting votes in some states).

 

[SV Fan]

The polls weren't off.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 500,000 ballots cast. That's what the polls were showing. The thing is that we do not choose our county's leaders by popular vote. That's why when you get this close to election day the state to state polls are more important since they figure into the electoral college count.

For the sake of argument Clinton's lead is now at 1.7M and chances are it will grow a bit as results trickle in over the next few weeks

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...2hdVns073R68EZx4SfCnP4IGQf8/htmlview?sle=true

There is about 3-4M outstanding votes and chances are Clinton will win 55-60% of them since the bulk come from big polling stations in cities. I would say she would win a higher percentage just based on that but there also is a bunch of absentee ballots to sort of counter that big city Democrat bias

 

[Kelly]

One common theory is that people simply lied.

Oh definitely this...also, there were some weird first time voting going on with this election, and those people are normally not on anyone's call list.

Also, the pollsters have to bring their polling up to the 21st century. It is ridiculously behind the times.

 

[dnno1]

For the sake of argument Clinton's lead is now at 1.7M and chances are it will grow a bit as results trickle in over the next few weeks

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...2hdVns073R68EZx4SfCnP4IGQf8/htmlview?sle=true

There is about 3-4M outstanding votes and chances are Clinton will win 55-60% of them since the bulk come from big polling stations in cities. I would say she would win a higher percentage just based on that but there also is a bunch of absentee ballots to sort of counter that big city Democrat bias

I think she finally won the popular vote by 3 million ballots. She did not run a very good campaign if you ask me since she didn't win the states that finally mattered Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Let this be a lesson to anyone running for President. You not only want to be the most popular candidate on a national scale, but you also want to be popular in the right number of states.

 

[SV Fan]

I think she finally won the popular vote by 3 million ballots. She did not run a very good campaign if you ask me since she didn't win the states that finally mattered Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Let this be a lesson to anyone running for President. You not only want to be the most popular candidate on a national scale, but you also want to be popular in the right number of states.

Assuming no more ballots come in Hillary's lead at this point is at 2.85M. I only seen a handfull of votes come in over the past week so I don't expect it to go up much more

In terms of the states you mentioned she lost all 3 of them by less then 80k votes combined. She definitely screwed up Wisconsin by not even showing up. Not only did she lose that State but the Dems lost a Senate seat they should have easily won there. She should have also spent more time in Michigan. In the case of Pennsylvania she put up a decent fight there and lost