this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
543 points (96.6% liked)

politics

19104 readers
2459 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've yet to get a clear answer on how they correct for the fact that no one answers the phone or wastes time talking to pollsters for free. I keep reading that " they take it into account" but not the methods used.

[–] hydrospanner@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Agreed.

Ultimately, polls are simply unable to account for the demographic of "doesn't participate in advance polling", and Anthony they attempt to do to account for that glaring weakness is guesswork.

[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Probably also looking at previous elections to compensate.

But the simple fact is that the repubs lost way more of their voterbase to covid than the Dems did. So if you use proportional models, there is a good chance they are off by double the excess deaths in the republican party... And that is a lot.

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Its worth searching it up, theres many recent stories detailing the methods.

They use a representative sample by reaching out to random voters or posting ads online in social spaces. Once they have enough people to make representative groups to match the population of the state or nation, maybe a few thousand people, they then ask them questions.

They tend to use the same people repeatedly, as they are more reliable in answering, and some of them are regularly paid small amounts for their time.

The polls are essentially tracking a group of people who thought it was worth their time to answer polls, which I am not a part of, and noone I know is a part of.

Edit to add: one new thing this election cycle is that a new weight has been added to account for party affiliation, which wasnt used before.

https://goodauthority.org/news/pollsters-are-weighting-surveys-differently-in-2024/