Hi Dominic,
I do think it is a very safe assumption that the vote count is right.
Voting in federal elections in the United States is administered independently by each state. The unit of voting administration is typically the county, although there are regions with non-existent or weak county governments, such as New England, where the unit of voting administration is the town and city. There are over 3,000 counties in the United States.
I think the fact that thousands and thousands of election bodies act without centralized coordination, and that election officials at the local level come from different parties, really does mitigate against any systemic issues in vote counting. The only cause for concern I can see are extremely close elections where minor errors one way or the other swing the outcome. However, that's not really a design flaw. Every measurement comes with error, and unfortunately our body politic is become so divided that a few hundred votes can matter, when in the past they didn't.
I really think these sort of concerns are coming from politics, particularly on the Left. Errors are going to happen and that's perfectly fine. Systems like first-past-the-post voting and the Electoral College actually help ensure that the final result won't be swayed by minor administrative problems (or outright fraud) at the local level. This is why I have confidence in the correctness of the voting results from our federal elections.
Best regards,
Greg
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Gregory Csikos, CPA, CFE, GStat
www.csikoscpa.com |
greg@csikoscpa.com1229 Chestnut Street PMB 221
Philadelphia, PA 19107
P: 215.341.4206
F: 267.392.6310
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-22-2019 14:15
From: Dominic Lusinchi
Subject: margin of error in political polls
To your point about "social desirability bias," the AAPOR committee that analyzed the 2016 polling results concluded that it does not appear to have contributed substantially to the polling error.
Another point we should add to the mix, and one which was brought up by an ASA member back in August, under the heading "Election Polling and Security" (and which received no reaction) is: we assume that the polls are wrong and the vote count is right. Is that a safe assumption? In light of what happened in Florida in 2000 and in 2004 (also in Ohio and Pennsylvania), perhaps not.
We have ASA members concerned about this issue. Philip Stark had been advocating "risk-limiting audits" for some years now.
Just a thought...
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Dominic Lusinchi
Independent researcher & consultant (retired)
San Francisco, Calif.
Original Message:
Sent: 10-22-2019 13:08
From: Ulderico Santarelli
Subject: margin of error in political polls
of course this is a major point. Sample design is a critical element of the complex porcess we call Survey. A probabilistic sample guarantees unbiased sample, on condition that the actual sample is executed perfectly without any non-response and any substitution. Probabilistic samples are mandatory at design stage. However, actual samples may differ at a great extent.
I just quote the two characteristic biases in election polls
- social desirability bias, whereby respondents do not reveal their true choice because fearing to be blamed when a candidate is badly hit by the media. "Deplorables" who voted for Trump probably did not reveal their choice to pollsters. This has been a major factor for the distance between the election outcome and almost all the surveys in 2016
- commitment bias, whereby respondents, possibly keeping a weak interest, anyway respond to the survey with the top of mind candidate.
In additon, when you read that they "interviewed likely voters" even the Universe becomes a problem. What does it mean having a Unverse subject to daily changes? And what is the Universe of "registered voters"? Weighting should be done with reference to the Universe in question. Do pollsters know the distribtution by age-sex of the Universe of registered voters or do they take the overall population marginals?
Last but not least, in saying that the candidate A is significantly ahead, one should use the a margin of error 1.41 (square root of 2) greater because the variance of a difference is the sum of the variances of the two penetrations in the comparison.
Ulderico.
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[Ulderico] [Santarelli]
[Las Vegas][Nevada]
Original Message:
Sent: 10-22-2019 12:19
From: Dominic Lusinchi
Subject: margin of error in political polls
Does not the margin of sampling (as I supposed that's what we're talking about here) error assume that the obtained sample is a probability sample in which every element in the population of interest has a probability greater than zero of being selected?
Is it not the case that nowadays the ability to obtain a (near) probability sample is, with few exceptions, a governmental privilege (e.g. the BLS's CPS)?
Does it make sense to speak of "margin of sampling error" under these conditions?
Error no doubt there is, but then how does one estimate its magnitude?
(Disclosure: I am a member of AAPOR.)
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Dominic Lusinchi
Independent researcher & consultant (retired)
San Francisco, Calif.
Original Message:
Sent: 10-21-2019 11:47
From: Stanislav Kolenikov
Subject: margin of error in political polls
Pollsters don't read ASA statements; there is a different professional organization that they belong to, though -- American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR; http://www.aapor.org). I would encourage you to look at their Transparency Initiative requirements in reporting the poll results, as well as their statements on margins of error. To understand how the assumption of "no bias in polls" is being relaxed in that discipline, read how poll aggregators like fivethirtyeight.com work.
P.S. There is no need to reinvent the circular-shaped means of propulsion. There are several dozen thousand person-years of research in survey methodology, sampling, polls, and public opinion. If you are really interested, take online classes at JPSM (http://jpsm.umd.edu), join AAPOR and subscribe to their webinars, come to their conference (mid to second half of May)... and then maybe in three or four years time we can compare notes.
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Stanislav Kolenikov
Principal Scientist
Abt Associates
Original Message:
Sent: 10-20-2019 17:50
From: Ulderico Santarelli
Subject: margin of error in political polls
it seems that the declared margin of error in political polls is computed with respect to the hypothetical penetration of 50%. Because the margin of error for penetrations decreases with it moving away from 50% towards 100% or 0% symmetrically, the common man may misinterpret this number all pollsters show as a single number while the candidates' penetrations differ even very much. For the Democratic Party, for instance, some penetrations are around 1%, while some others are around 30%.
I suggest that, in view of the high interest people use to place on political polls, particularly during election years, ASA should issue a recommendation to pollsters in order to have a personalized margin of error. In this way, people would understand the basic fact the small penetrations have a small margin of error in comparison to higher ones. For instance, in a sample of 500 respondents, a 30% penetration would have a margin of error of 0.04 while a penetration of 1% would have a margin of 0.008! Poor penetrations are therefore more precise than higher ones. This can be observed empirically looking at all polls together. Assuming no bias in all polls, they can be considered independent replicates of the same poll where the only source of variations can be the time span where the poll has been taken and the various data collection inconveniences, like interviewer/interviewee interactions, data collection mode or similar. Therefore, poor performers have two bad news: not ony they perorm badly! In addition their poverty is almost certain.
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[Ulderico] [Santarelli]
[Las Vegas][Nevada]
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