Post by PeteWasLuckyOn 28.7.2024 8.32, PeteWasLucky wrote:>https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/07/27/trump-vs-harris-2024-polls-trump-holds-slight-lead-over-harris-in-harrisxforbes-poll/What exactly is amazing? Polls have always been conducted by randomly sampling a subset of the population. Nothing new here. A sample size of a 1000 gives roughly a 3% margin for error. It is in fact amazing how fast these things converge with so little. A 10k sample size would give you approximately 1% margin for error. But that would cost 10x more, and there are other sources of uncertainty.Polls are polls.-- "And off they went, from here to there,The bear, the bear, and the maiden fair"-- Traditional
Polls can be much trustworthy if they care to have them more reflective to an actual election day.
"Caldwell said there are also behavioral differences between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are more likely to participate in a poll but less likely to vote. Republicans are less likely to respond to a survey and more likely to vote. Distinctions like these add to the complexity of nailing down accuracy."
Add to this is that there is a giant demand for polls, so that the
results can be manipulated and/or presented, and of course this means
there's money to be made.
The devil is in the methodology, and few, very few, are capable of
unwinding these methodologies so as to really and truly *understand* the
basis on which the polls are conducted and evaluated.
In this regard they are a sort of specialized study. Both polls and
studies are there to be purchased by interested parties who want to add
credibility to their claims. No less a public figure than Winston
Churchill was claimed to have said: "I trust only statistics that I have
falsified, myself."
It's up to us to figure out, which, or even *if*, studies and polls are
to be trusted, and to what degree.
See why one is best off relying on personal experience? :^)
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"If we use Occam's Razor, whose razor will *he* use?" --Sawfish
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