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Michael Segal's avatar

You are putting too much trust in the pollsters.

On the day before the election, the main headline on the front page of the print NYT was "Tightest Contest in Decades Grows Tighter at Finish". The same day I submitted an op-ed column to the WSJ explaining why one shouldn't trust the pollsters when they make such statements. My article appeared online on Election Day, while voting was underway and no results were yet available, and in print the morning after election day. The article began with the following:

"No, the election polls weren’t wrong. We no longer have election polls. All we have are projections, which can be far off from reality. In this year’s New York Times/Siena College surveys, pollsters received a response from only 2% of the people they contacted, the Times reports. Response rates have been plunging for years: The Pew Research Center reported a decline from 36% in 1997 to 6% in 2019."

The low response rate is the fundamental flaw facing pollsters.

For those with WSJ access the full article is at https://www.wsj.com/opinion/when-is-a-poll-not-a-poll-voters-trust-models-2024-election-ed04cd18

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Lloyd Talbert's avatar

Unfortunate for a conservative group to perform this analysis through the lens of identity politics. It seems to demand equity of outcome (all groups vote the same pattern) as the desired end state. You can do better than that.

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