• teft@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The NBC News poll was conducted April 12-16 of 1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cell phone. — and the poll has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

      • teft@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        1000 people with 89% contacted via cell phone isn’t going to be representative of the US voting population. How many people do you know under 45 that answer random numbers?

        • Silverseren@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          I mean, it’s better than them using land lines like they used to. And, if they did it properly, then their calls should have caller ID saying it’s the polling service. Also, they should leave a message to get called back.

          I don’t know if they did any of that, but it would be the right way to do it.

          • ripcord@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Man, what a weird thing to blame on a specific Boogeyman generation.

            Pretty sure there were/are other people besides boomers involved in spam calls, creating text message systems, and other things that have led to a decline in voice calls.

            Might as well blame them for literally everything that happened after the 1960s when they became adults.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cell phone.

          We’re used to that as a “low number” because it’s easy to get.

          But you know what?

          That’s a fucking giant sample size, it’s more than enough for American voters, and while you can poll more, it quickly starts to dilute the worth.

          Like, they’re calling random people, it ain’t like they’re walking down the street asking everyone and taking the first 1,000 to respond, which explained why it wasn’t 1,000 respondents…

          But this?

          How many people do you know under 45 that answer random numbers?

          https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24564257-240126-nbc-april-2024-poll-4-21-2024-release

          Bruh, it’s a legitimate poll, you don’t have to “just ask questions” when it takes to clicks from the webpage you were already on…

          • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            But the other guy is right. There’s a problem with polling now because many people don’t answer the phone. It doesn’t matter how many people you have in the sample if it’s biased.

            In this case it’s clearly biased against people who don’t answer random numbers. The “not answering” cohort may be correlated with other population groups like people with higher education and higher earnings. The survey may be systematically missing this chunk of the population, making the results biased too.

            Higher educated democrats not surveyed -> the survey misses their opinions -> the survey is wrong when the results come in at election time.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Mate, it used to be cold calling landlines…

              Shit is getting more accurate, not less.

              Like, do you think more and better communication makes it harder to get reliable polling? You think doctors, lawyers, and rocket scientists were answering every phone call during dinner when it was landlines?

              And the switch to cell phones was like, a decade ago?

              Why is it now a problem?

              Like, what is your version of what’s happening that polls aren’t reliable now?

              Are you saying polls have been broke? Because polls were right in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. And not a lot has changed…

              So do you think this year “the media” is somehow doing a psyop campaign and rhats why people aren’t hyped about Biden? Because, newsflash, we weren’t last election either.

              So I’m really struggling to understand why out of the goddamn blue everyone and their brother who has never even walked down a hallway in college where statistical analysis was studied in the last decade suddenly became experts.

              This is the exact same bullshit the Republicans started as. Now they’re running trump.

              • gregorum@lemm.ee
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                7 months ago

                You’re arguing that just because it may have been worse a long time ago (which you haven’t proven, btw), that today’s problems shouldn’t matter.

                This is, obviously, absurd.

                While there may have been improvements over past methods, that’s no excuse not to solve the issues we face with current methodologies. Don’t be silly.

              • summerof69@lemm.ee
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                7 months ago

                Like, what is your version of what’s happening that polls aren’t reliable now?

                Didn’t they explain?

                In this case it’s clearly biased against people who don’t answer random numbers. The “not answering” cohort may be correlated with other population groups like people with higher education and higher earnings. The survey may be systematically missing this chunk of the population, making the results biased too.

                Higher educated democrats not surveyed -> the survey misses their opinions -> the survey is wrong when the results come in at election time.

                  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    And it always has been…

                    Yet every election going back decades was within the margin of error of polls.

                    Statistics are not new. They’ve been around for a very very long time.

                    I admit, I only took one graduate level statistical analysis course, so maybe you’ve got more experience.

                    But it really sounds like a bunch of people who don’t know anything about science complaining about science because they don’t like the results…

                    Do you know who else does that?

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  But that’s always been the case…

                  And polls are normally right

                  People think they’re bad now, because Hillary and the media said if she was projected by less then the margin of error, then she won those states and we can count on them.

                  Which is stupid, and was only done because they thought she was more popular and resulted in just enough people staying home that trump won…

                  How does that mean now when the polls are even worse, that we should ignore the polls and carry on with false confidence?

                  It doesn’t make any any logical sense.

                  • summerof69@lemm.ee
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                    6 months ago

                    People think they’re bad now, because Hillary and the media said

                    No, this particular user thinks polls are bod because younger voters, who are more likely to vote for Democrats, are not going to pick up calls from random numbers. They were very clear. Why are you inventing arguments that were never mentioned in the discussion?

        • MxM111@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          They are talking about couple percent lead one way or another. When there is 3.1% standard deviation. In short, it is in the noise.