tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post3016132148408984552..comments2024-03-28T14:16:10.498+11:00Comments on Dr Kevin Bonham: Trump Wins: Another Major Poll And Modelling FailureKevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-65579782079135235712016-12-19T13:44:52.404+11:002016-12-19T13:44:52.404+11:00Part of the problem parties have is the quality of...Part of the problem parties have is the quality of candidates. It's easy to separate parties vs candidates but candidate selection and management is part of basic competence in running parties. <br /><br />Part of the reason why minor parties stay minor or don't survive is because they live or die on the candidates they select. Major parties can claim "no individual is bigger than the party" and not only have more/better candidates to choose from, but are often smarter about who they put up. <br /><br />One Nation will need to put up attractive candidates to win in Lyons, Braddon or wherever else they might contest. Equally importantly, they will have to avoid selecting the sorts of ding-dongs they chose in Queensland in 1998 (turning 11 seats into a one-term aberration), or Culleton more recently. Major parties make selection errors too (eg Labor's Peter Knott in 1993 or Liberal Jaymes Diaz in 2013) but their reputations and institutional base carry them past these aberrations. One Nation and other minors lack that buffer, ensuring that any candidates of quality and potential have more to fear from loose units in their own ranks than from their clearly identifiable opponents.<br /><br />Psephology doesn't really assess candidate quality (except perhaps stunts like putting popular candidates down the ticket for multi-candidate elections), and takes whomever parties put up as given. There is some scope to model the impact of particularly popular candidates. Only in retrospect can you assess the impact of an undisclosed bankruptcy/conviction or other voter-repellent behaviour by a candidate, which reflects upon (if not sinks) their party. This was certainly a problem with assessments of Trump, where his voter-repellent behaviour did not appear to have repelled actual voters at the election.Andrew Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04705844456819481896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-36846061087827414162016-11-17T22:29:16.108+11:002016-11-17T22:29:16.108+11:00I agree that the 538 model didn't really fail ...I agree that the 538 model didn't really fail as such and was just unlucky in not predicting the outcome. It was the exception as far as models went though; many others were overconfident. As concerns the others, if one poll is wrong by 5 points on the margin in a state that can be just margin of error stuff given the problems you mention. But if all of them are wrong by about that much in the same direction, then there is a problem.Kevin Bonhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-35607193159421172892016-11-17T22:07:49.484+11:002016-11-17T22:07:49.484+11:00None of the Presidential Swing State results were ...None of the Presidential Swing State results were outside the 80% confidence intervals from the 538 model, so the 538 model did not fail. And the fact that the mean Clinton Trump difference in the polls for the Midwest blue states which fell was about 5 percentage points in error is not really a failure of the polls either, as in the US where you do not have compulsory voting, it is much harder to estimate the actual result from the polls. The Michigan polls were predicting 5% for Johnson, and he only got 3%, so if that 2% went to Trump, you have straightaway explained half the 'error' in the polls. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13140395010386651393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-60934195222383714132016-11-12T12:53:05.907+11:002016-11-12T12:53:05.907+11:00The way I look at it, this was an accident waiting...The way I look at it, this was an accident waiting to happen. I had made some input into fivethirtyeight late last week about the “failure” of polling here in Australia over the 1996-2016 period. There is a random scatter of error about the “correct” prediction. Poll aggregation does not improve this error. This was a bit dispiriting to me – especially as the first time I tried it (1996) I was spot on the money. That was pure luck – I had to wait 20 years for a repeat.<br />Silver ran a piece on Monday night, pointing out where everything could go wrong and, despite him being on the money in 2008 and 2012, he said that an average miss by 2 to 3 %age points is anything but uncommon.<br />I did a bit of crunching using the numbers from several websites and could faintly discern the following.<br />As has been reported, if 107,000 voters had gone the other way in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (combined turn-out of 13.6 million voters), Trump would not have won.<br />Turn-out was highest in the Swing States (response to attention?)<br />Turn-out was down everywhere except in several of Trump’s critical swing states (Trump recruitment of previous non-voters?)<br />Turn-out was especially down in Clinton’s strong states (“none of the above” effect?).<br />As a colleague in Pennsylvania says – the Electoral College has a magnifying effect on minor shifts in voting. But, although “everybody hates the EC, don’t expect changes anytime soon.”<br /><br /><br />Geoff Lamberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01999702600433868733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-69954038733534407312016-11-10T21:21:00.736+11:002016-11-10T21:21:00.736+11:00It seems pretty clear that a lot of Clinton votes ...It seems pretty clear that a lot of Clinton votes were "wasted"....either in safe Democratic states who would never vote Trump anyway, or in safer Republican states that she targeted early on (Texas, Georgia, Arizona).<br /><br />On the other hand, Trump got his absolute dream scenario. He got votes exactly where and when he needed them, and eeked out narrow wins in critical swing states. <br /><br />It's basically the US version of the Australian 1998 election.Mark Mulcairhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08483740999986680525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-24577184438974823382016-11-10T21:00:53.750+11:002016-11-10T21:00:53.750+11:00Looking at a bunch of reports from the final US po...Looking at a bunch of reports from the final US polls they are a little less generous in detail than UK polls I have looked at, but a lot more generous than Australia's. Still, raw data are generally not released. In the UK a lot of the pollsters would have disclosed the decisions they were making during the polling review, but I am unsure whether anything like that will even be attempted in the USA. <br /><br />My question with any unusual method claimed to have predicted Trump's win would be how many times has it been used successfully before (with predictions published before the election and not retro-fitted or fudged afterwards). If it is a method with a track record that is not based on polling then there may be something in it. If it is something that has just been done once it is probably a lucky hit. Kevin Bonhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-55091077700795902602016-11-10T20:40:55.666+11:002016-11-10T20:40:55.666+11:00One thing that rarely gets mentioned in these post...One thing that rarely gets mentioned in these post mortems is that it impossible to know what went wrong with the polls because they never release the raw data, who knows what corrections were made and why. I did hear of one pundit who predicted Trump's win by completely disregarding the poll data and using data from the primaries etc instead. I've no idea if this was just random chance or if there is something to his methodology. <br />I think this puts the theory of the shy conservative beyond doubt and will put a lot of attention on the polls for the French Presidential election, I see the odds for Le Pen shortened dramatically in the last few days.SneakyPetehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13979788335587833421noreply@blogger.com