UPDATED: CNN is a live poll; Gravis and KBUR/Monmouth polling uses the controversial robo-call

[Attorney in Texas]

Last edited Thu Jan 21, 2016, 06:30 PM - Edit history (1)

polling methodology that has a huge in-house pro-Trump and pro-Clinton effect (I have not seen a convincing explanation for this, but the effect is well documented).

This explains why you see CNN polling that shows Sanders leads in Iowa and New Hampshire with contemporaneous polls from Gravis and Monmouth that show Clinton ahead in Iowa and a tighter race in New Hampshire.

If you do nothing other than exclude robo-call polls from the Pollster aggregator, Sanders is ahead in Iowa and Sanders is comfortably up by double-digits in New Hampshire:





It does Clinton no favors to set her expectations in Iowa based on robo-call polls because, historically, falling short of expectations is almost worse than losing in Iowa.

[JonLeibowitz]

1. Before the usual suspects say that you are committing a Romney, could you explain

Why robocalls are controversial and unreliable?

Thanks, I actually don't know the answer to this question

[Attorney in Texas]

3. The first link is to the 538 blog's detailed discussion of that issue.

[JonLeibowitz]

4. Apologies. I mistakenly thought it was just polling data. Thank you. n/t

[Attorney in Texas]

9. No worries. With the recent flood of robo-call polls out there, it muddles the picture

[Attorney in Texas]

5. Also, Romney was "unskewing" polls -- i.e., he was using the underlying polling data and applying a

different turn-out model to reach a different conclusion than what the pollster reached (for example, if some poll had Pres. Obama winning the race, and that poll had a 52% women and 48% men, but Romney thought the actual turnout would be 45% women and 55% men, he would re-calculate the polling results to deflate the women's answers to 45% of the total responses and inflate the men's answers to reach 55% and then he would get a different result from what the pollster projected).

This is not re-analyzing or "unskewing" any polls. It is just

(1) noting the indisputable trend that Clinton and Trump do better -- for whatever reason -- in robo-call polls and

(2) noting that the robo-call polls and the live cell/land line phone polls cannot both be right because they consistently project different results where the contemporaneous polls achieve results that are outside of the margin of error for the other method poll, and

(3) noting how the poll aggregation looks quite different if you exclude the robo-call polls from the mix.

[Fawke Em]

2. The reason is simple: you can't robo call cell phones.

It's against the law, so pollsters who use robo-calls to poll get older voters with landlines.

And older voters tend to like Clinton.

I don't know enough about Trump's demos to say if that's true of him, but, given that he's on TV 24/7 and older people watch more mainstream media than younger voters, his support may also lean to the older voter.

[Attorney in Texas]

6. That may be part of the picture but Trump's supporters (unlike Clinton's) include younger people and

so that does not seem to be the entire explanation.

[winter is coming]

11. It's more than that. I don't think robo-calls randomly mix up the order of the candidates'

names. If you look at the actual questionnaires for live polls, there's usually an instruction to alternate the order of names. The scripts I've seen for robo-call polls have a "Press '1' for so-and-so" format, with no indication that names are being rotated.

[msongs]

7. is this like when supporters of certain candidate spam online polls? nt

[Attorney in Texas]

8. No, participating in on-line polls is an indication of enthusiasm. This is just about bad polling

methodologies being mixed in with polls using proven methodologies.

[Attorney in Texas]

10. updated to include CNN poll