Here we are, 2 days before “the Mother of All Elections” (to paraphrase the late Saddam Hussein), and naturally everyone is calm, cool, collected, and thinking about something else.
(This conclusion is based on a tiny statistical sample, and is subject to an unknown but possibly significant margin of error.)
So far, ZERO votes have been counted, so if you’re climbing the walls worrying about WHO WILL WIN, all you’ve got is polls. Human nature being what it is, most people will interpret the polls in one of these two ways:
- If your candidate is ahead, the polls are reassuring.
- If your candidate is behind, the polls are wrong.
In regard to the latter (#2 above), the fact the polls predicted Hillary Clinton would win in 2016 inevitably is reassuring to people who want the polls to be wrong, and makes people hoping the polls are right nervous as hell. In short, nobody is really comfortable with the polls.
Probably the best thing to do is ignore them.
So the rest of this article is purely academic and solely for the prurient interest of people who look at statistics as pornography because they’re bored with the real thing.
Helpfully, Matthew Yglesias of Vox has written an article for us explaining how this whole polling thing works. Matt is a bright guy; the son and grandson of novelists and screenwriters, he graduated from Harvard, then wrote for (among others) The Atlantic and Slate before co-founding Vox, so he’s been writing for a national audience for a long time. He’s also a liberal and wants Trump to lose, so he finds the polls showing Biden comfortably ahead reassuring.
In his Vox article, Yglesias delves into the nuts and bolts of how pollsters conduct polls. He talks about demographic groups, weighting, the fact most people refuse to talk to pollsters, why the polls failed to call Trump’s 2016 win, and why there’s no mass of “shy Trump” voters lurking out there to sandbag the people hoping the polls are right this time. You can read it here.
If you’re really a poll junkie, don’t overlook Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight (here). Be aware that Silver is a statistician who collects, analyzes, and grades polls, not a pollster. His latest post is titled, “I’m Here to Remind You That Trump Can Still Win” (read it here, if you’re so inclined).
This is all okay as far as it goes, but with the counting of actual votes now just a couple days away, obsessing over polls strikes me as both pointless and psychologically unhealthy. This seems like a good time to channel Alfred E. Neuman.
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