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It rarely takes into consideration the past accuracy of polling companies, let alone how many people were included in the poll and whether pollsters spoke to enough minority groups.
My NationalJournal.com column this week reviews the three big sources of worry among pollsters and others about the accuracy of polling this fall: the potential that pollsters are missing voters in "cell phone only" households, the potential that "likely voter models" may be missing certain types of voters and the worries about the Bradley-Wilder effect.
If the polls are dead wrong and a landslide for one or another of the candidates comes about, one will be forced to reevaluate the real influence of the media in general and the accuracy of polling data in the modern age, and perhaps strike a blow for all those who resent being slotted, parsed, categorized, bracketed and pushed and pulled into corrals like mindless cattle.
The accuracy of polling is now in doubt.
The accuracy of polling in this election will hinge on the margin of error.
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Letters are welcome via e-mail to [email protected] and answersSIR – Your article about the accuracy of opinion polling in America's election stated that "online surveys are notoriously biased" ("Poll, baby, poll!", October 25th).
The problem is not the accuracy of polls.
In a typical November election, a 6-point lead with two weeks to go would translate into a high probability of winning — roughly on the order of 90 percent, based on the historical accuracy of polls of governors' races.
The media analysts will fill the hours on the cable news networks, proffering post-election chestnuts about the accuracy of polls, or about either candidate's success with one demographic or another.
There, Mr. Obama leads by 2.6 percentage points, which should convert to a victory about 80 percent of the time given the historical accuracy of polls at this late stage of the race.
People can and do change their party affiliation, and if pollsters try to control for that by imposing a different turnout model on their sample, they wind up erasing the very signal a change in the electorate's preference that they are trying to detect.A second take-away is that despite Mr Silver's reputation as an evangelist for the accuracy of polls, he probably didn't trust them enough.
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