The average poll respondent is older, whiter, and more conservative than the average voter. So you end up with a skewed sample.
Any reputable polling group will adjust for that. Granted, fewer and fewer people are answering their phones and taking these polls, but basic demographics are a well-known and pretty easy to adjust for thing. Most polls take a lot of that information for that reason
People here and on Reddit really think that polls are made with just a few calls and then some average/extrapolation and that’s it.
Meanwhile it’s an entire field with a lot of complex math and people with more knowledge about it than everyone in this comment section combined.
And then the classic “polls are shit, they always get it wrong”. By definition polls are correct because they just represent an objective data set. Then they translate it into a phrase that we humans can (somewhat) understand but people then take it wrongly.
They read “Poll X says candidate Y will win” when instead they should read “According to the data obtained for Poll X, candidate Y has a Z% chance of winning with a confidence level of W%”. And that isn’t wrong unless someone wants to find the mistake in the math.
Any reputable polling group will adjust for that. Granted, fewer and fewer people are answering their phones and taking these polls, but basic demographics are a well-known and pretty easy to adjust for thing. Most polls take a lot of that information for that reason
Yes
People here and on Reddit really think that polls are made with just a few calls and then some average/extrapolation and that’s it.
Meanwhile it’s an entire field with a lot of complex math and people with more knowledge about it than everyone in this comment section combined.
And then the classic “polls are shit, they always get it wrong”. By definition polls are correct because they just represent an objective data set. Then they translate it into a phrase that we humans can (somewhat) understand but people then take it wrongly.
They read “Poll X says candidate Y will win” when instead they should read “According to the data obtained for Poll X, candidate Y has a Z% chance of winning with a confidence level of W%”. And that isn’t wrong unless someone wants to find the mistake in the math.