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The Forum > Article Comments > US election - how did polls get it so wrong? > Comments

US election - how did polls get it so wrong? : Comments

By Mal Fletcher, published 10/11/2016

Today, stunned reactions within the US establishment reveal that many of the people who make their living in and around US politics are as out of touch with the wider public mood as their British counterparts.

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The pollsters are part of the conceited Ivory Tower problem and represent some very tired views?

The Democrats could have romped in with Bernie Sanders, given the mood for change! Which to date has been kicked on down the road! THe cause of the astonishing anti wall st anti establishment result!

3,000 thousand Americans died at the hands of terrorists on 9/11 as the twin towers crumbled, while the world and America watched on in disbelief. Even so, one million Americans have died as a consequence of universally unaffordable medicine! While nobody watched or gave a flying french frankfurt! And unthinkable as an outcome just across the Canadian border!

America's industrial heartland became a rust belt as manufacturing fled, chasing largely illusory profits? Profits that could be returned to the land of the dollar bill through cooperative capitalism, which at least shares the wealth among those who earn or create it! Supported by the rollout of clean safe ultra-cheap nuclear energy!

Energy is the keystone that holds the nation together and returns profitable production without screwing the worker! The pollsters thought that Hillary was a virtual shoo in given how many folk Mr. Trump managed to offend!

And the republican nominee played his trump card well, the thirty years Hillary has spent in public office while "it" happened all around her! And couldn't have been played If Bernie was the Democrats candidate?

One can only hope Mr Trump was/is sincere, and not just a power hungry Jackass, who'll leave the joint worse than he found it?
Alan B
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 10 November 2016 5:20:22 PM
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quite hilarous how the middle aged angry white man is to blame. Seems to me that the ones throwing tantrums on the street now are angry violent brainwashed lefties who have never been spanked in their life. Maybe they need to hoses turned on them.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 10 November 2016 5:25:46 PM
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Alan B. I'm undecided what parts of his campaign he was sincere about. Some parts I hope not. There is though an interesting video on YouTube showing his answers over many years when asked about running for POTUS. Overall consistent and in my paraphrasing that he might eventually but hoping someone else would step in and stop the rot. Politics did not seem to be where he wanted to play.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OCabT_O0YSM

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Thursday, 10 November 2016 6:06:34 PM
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The opinion polls were not representative of the state by state electoral system. They took a general poll of the population, most of whom are based in the cities, where support was overwhelmingly for Clinton.

They may have allowed for this, but obviously not enough,
Posted by Killarney, Friday, 11 November 2016 5:57:43 AM
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What I find most interesting in the way these so-called experts were shown to be wrong again (having got Brexit so wrong) is that there is a total lack of learning from people who assume that they are brightest and the best.

We are told that the polls all got it wrong. Well that's basically true. But the LA Times poll was predicting Trump for months. This same poll was the most accurate in 2012. Yet it was completely ignored (having been ignored in 2012) because it was an outlier. The 'professional' pollsters were right but this one was wrong (we were told) because it didn't do polling in the approved way.

Then we had the experts. Again we are told that 'no one' predicted this. But that's not true. No one in the approved list of experts predicted it.

When the primaries were on, the 'experts' said Trump had no chance. When Coulter said back in mid 2015 that he'd win, the Bill Maher audience fell about laughing. Other like Don Surber and Scott Adams were picking Trump from the outset. Yet when Trump did win, did the media then decide that their experts might not be so expert and that some of those who now had a track record should get a hearing?

Instead the 'experts', already shown to be monumentally wrong, carried on as before. Every time Trump said something the coastal elites didn't like, the 'experts' decreed that his campaign was over. But those who knew what Trump was doing and who understood his supporters, knew that he wasn't talking to the elites.

/cont
Posted by mhaze, Friday, 11 November 2016 11:55:06 AM
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/cont
So even now they haven't learned and won't. Even now after the election, when it should be abundantly clear that the 'real' America is in the rust belts and that New Yorkers don't speak for America. But still, even now, when the ABC wants to find out what the 'people' think of the election, they hit the streets of NY, or LA.

If they had any conscious, people like Paul McGeough (SMH) or the ABC 'US-experts' would have a disclaimer at the end of every report pointing out that they haven't got a clue about their area of expertise and should, therefore, be taken with more than a few grains of salt.
Posted by mhaze, Friday, 11 November 2016 11:56:07 AM
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Hey Mal,
Your article misses the point entirely, but I'm glad you wrote it so that I'm able to refute it;
- because the real truth is worse than any of your explanations.

The answer is 'Oversampling'; deliberately creating misleading poll statistics that favour a particular candidate.
The corporate media was biased towards one candidate, had even made campaign contributions towards one candidate and were deliberately seeking to manipulate the outcome of the election.

Why? Because you can't rig an election without first rigging the polls.
You have to rig the polls to create an artificial show of support for a particular candidate otherwise when you announce that the less popular candidate won people won't know something is up.
Also 'on-the-fence' voters want to be able to say they were on the winning team.

Hillary manipulated the election and engaged in electoral fraud all over the place in numerous different ways in order to try and steal the election.
But with Trumps and the independent media's focus on electoral vote rigging and exit polling people were paying attention and she was not able to steal a landslide vote supportive of Donald Trump.

Poll statistics can be as much a part of the campaign rather than a true indicator of whats going to happen on election day.

The consistency of recent so-called 'unexpected' voting decisions prove its really complicity from a bias media and not incompetent pollsters getting it wrong.

The independent media claimed different poll statistics all along, but the corporate media would not report this.
Posted by Armchair Critic, Friday, 11 November 2016 12:26:43 PM
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Wishful thinking is probably much to blame among many. Sure there was rigging by some, & others who desired a Clinton win probably disregarded some of their results so their polls agreed with those.

Of course the concentration on New York, California & Washington DC could have given them the result they wanted, without having to misinterpret anything.

It is fairly obvious that much of this polling is designed to affect the vote, not report people's intentions.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 11 November 2016 1:59:25 PM
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