{"id":52016,"date":"2020-11-05T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=52016"},"modified":"2020-11-04T12:51:12","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T17:51:12","slug":"on-the-wrongness-of-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2020\/11\/on-the-wrongness-of-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Wrongness of Polls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pre-election polls<\/a> showed Joe Biden beating Donald Trump by an average of 10 points.\u00a0 \u00a0Polls also showed Biden with a comfortable lead in virtually all of the battleground states.\u00a0 These included a 17 point lead in Wisconsin (now too close to call), a 5 point lead in Florida (which Trump won by 3.4 points), and a 4 point lead in Ohio (which Trump won by 8.1 points).<\/p>\n

So pollsters and pundits were predicting a Biden landslide, a \u201cblue wave\u201d that would cleanse the nation.\u00a0 But that didn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 However this election turns out, we know that the polls were, once again as they were in 2016, spectacularly wrong.<\/p>\n

\n

THE POLLING INDUSTRY\u00a0is a wreck, and should be blown up.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened?\u00a0 One explanation being offered is the \u201cshy\u201d Trump voter, the notion that people are embarrassed to admit to a pollster that they support the widely demonized president, lest they feel like a social pariah.<\/p>\n

I think the problem goes deeper than that.\u00a0 After all, the polls have also been wrong in missing conservative victories in other races, such as Brexit in the UK and the parliamentary elections in Australia.<\/p>\n

I think survey results should include statistical data on the number of people who \u201cdeclined to respond.\u201d<\/p>\n

I almost never respond to opinion polls of any kind.\u00a0 Do you?\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to spend my precious time\u2013\u201cit won\u2019t take more than 15 minutes\u201d\u2013being interrogated about my personal views by a stranger.<\/p>\n

I wonder how many potential subjects just refuse to participate in the polls and if there is a correlation with conservative positions.<\/p>\n

Actually, I used to participate in polls, thinking that my views might thereby be influential in the public square.\u00a0 But the options given to me to choose from were seldom adequate to capture my positions.\u00a0 When given four choices, or \u201cagree\u201d or \u201cdisagree,\u201d it\u2019s almost impossible to express complicated or nuanced opinions.\u00a0 As for \u201chow do you feel on a scale of one to ten,\u201d my answers were almost always arbitrary, not really comparable to other subjects performing the same exercise, and thus not reliable at all.<\/p>\n

And yet, though I almost never agree to take part in polls anymore, I did do an exit poll on Tuesday!\u00a0 I had never been asked before, so I was kind of intrigued, wanting to see what it is like and to be involved in helping the media call a race.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t much help.\u00a0 I have a strong commitment to the secret ballot, so I never tell anyone how I vote.\u00a0 But there were lots of other questions.\u00a0 Again, the options didn\u2019t fit with my thinking.\u00a0 I was asked, \u201cwhich issue is the most important to you?,\u201d COVID-19, the economy, or health or safety?\u00a0 Opposition to abortion was not a choice.\u00a0 Nor was \u201cmoral breakdown\u201d or \u201ccultural collapse\u201d or \u201copposition to postmodernism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unreliability of polls has implications far beyond politics.\u00a0 It calls into question the entire field of the social sciences, which rely to a\u00a0 large degree on survey instruments and polling.\u00a0 Already these disciplines are facing a crisis because it turns out so few of these studies are reproducible.\u00a0 Different researchers get different results when they do the same experiment, which would indicate that human studies are not in accord with the scientific method.\u00a0 Indeed, human beings\u2013unlike inert chemicals and non-rational organisms\u2013are not going to be predictably consistent or capable of being quantified.\u00a0 This is because human beings, unlike other things scientists study, have agency<\/em>.\u00a0 It is becoming increasingly evident that the social sciences are not sciences at all.<\/p>\n

I myself consult polling results and often blog about what a \u201cstudy finds.\u201d\u00a0 When trying to understand cultural trends or how people view things, there is no other option than to try to find out what people say.\u00a0 I think there can still be a use for these things, but now I wonder.\u00a0 Perhaps researchers can refine their methods or somehow make their findings more reliable.\u00a0 But I suspect there will always be major limitations to this kind of data, since human beings can change their minds and violate expectations.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image by\u00a0mohamed Hassan<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0Pixabay<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, the polls were spectacularly wrong in predicting the recent election. 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