중요외신 Don't believe the polls — Trump is winning. Surveys are great when respondents know what they’re answering and when the sample is representative

[panchan1]

Don't believe the polls — Trump is winning

BY JONATHAN JAKUBOWSKI AND CHRISTOS A. MAKRIDIS, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 10/27/20 01:30 PM EDT  6,973

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

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We predict that President Trump is going to win the 2020 presidential election — and win big.

While the majority of the polls suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading, or at best that it’s close, those polls suffer from at least three problems.

First, the tone of the questions. There is significant evidence from behavioral psychology that suggests that the way a question is framed predetermines the range of potential answers. In fact, Gallup has found that respondents can answer very differently to questions with the same topic even in the same survey based on the language that’s used. And the use of metaphors can even dwarf the importance of preexisting differences between Republicans and Democrats.

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One of the reasons respondents do that is because of a tendency to give socially desirable answers, which was the case especially during the 2016 election. Most people don’t like confrontation, so the easiest, albeit not necessarily the best, solution is to avoid it. Right now, saying that you’re voting for Trump/Pence is often not the socially desirable answer. In fact, a recent poll by the Cato Institute suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that the political climate is sufficiently harsh that they don’t want to give their genuine opinion about politics.

Second, the sample of respondents. Who responds depends on many factors, including the medium (e.g., landline versus cellphone), the location, the sample size and demographic factors. Moreover, the pool of respondents is not necessarily the same as the pool of likely voters. Even though election polls all contain a margin of error, that margin of error is unreliable if the underlying sample does not reflect the population. Researchers have also identified self-screening as the major contributing factor to the polling failures during the 2016 election cycle.

For example, distrust of pollsters also leads to lower response rates for Trump supporters. Rasmussen finds that 17 percent of likely U.S. voters who “strongly approve” of the job Trump is doing say they are less likely to let others know how they intend to vote in the upcoming election. By comparison, only 8 percent of those who “strongly disapprove” of the president’s performance say the same.

While proper sampling methodology matters more than the size, having a representative sample with enough people still helps considerably. Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar Group notes how their work to create minimum samples sizes of 1,000 voters, added to their work to doggedly pursue the “quiet Trump voter,” led to Trafalgar being one of the most successful battleground polling firms in the country in 2016. Cahaly explains that “we don’t do a state with less than a thousand. You see these polls, 400, 500, 600 people for a state. I don’t buy that. Your margin of error is far too high.”

Third, the content of the current news cycle. What’s going on in a particular moment in time can influence voter attitudes, particularly in swing states. For example, the recent revelation of Hunter Biden’s hidden emails on his laptop, coupled with the link to his father, has come at an opportune time for the president. Moreover, if the economic recovery continues, the good news may continue putting wind in Trump’s sails.

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Admittedly, no poll is perfect. That’s why RealClearPolitics takes a step forward by “averaging out” these errors across polls. But “averaging out” only works when errors are made in both directions. Here, many polls make errors primarily in one direction, so the average will still reflect some of the biases that exist.

Gallup conducted a recent survey finding that 56 percent of respondents report that they are better off than they were four years ago, which is striking given that we are in the midst of a pandemic with a recovering labor market and deepening political polarization.

We delved a little deeper into the data from Gallup, coupled with voter registration data, for eight swing states. We find that states with a higher proportion of people who report that they are thriving have a lower polling average for Biden and a higher one for Trump. What’s even more telling is that there’s a big gap between the percentage of people who say they’re thriving and the percentage who say they’re voting for Biden. For example, that gap is 5.3 percentage points in Pennsylvania.

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Moreover, if we look at voter registration in Pennsylvania, we see a similar pattern. There were 803,427 more registered Democrats than Republicans as of May, but that gap has narrowed to 700,853 as of October. In fact, Republicans have netted seven times as many registered Republican voters than Democrats since 2016. Similar trends are taking place in North Carolina and Florida.

We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we do have some of the right questions. How are people actually feeling? Surveys are great when respondents know what they’re answering and when the sample is representative, but surveys can be misleading otherwise.

Jakubowski is author of the newly-released book, “Bellwether Blues: A Conservative Awakening of the Millennial Soul.” He is also director of an award-winning startup business focused on sustainable packaging and is the executive chairman of the Wood County Republican Party. Follow him on Twitter at @jonjakubowski. Makridis is a research professor with Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, a senior adviser at Gallup and a nonresident fellow at Baylor University. Follow him at @camakridis.

[cjs5x5]

한마디로 기존 여론조사기관들의 조사방법론이 잘못 설계되어있다는 내용이군요. 미국은 연구주제에 대해 정량적으로 변환하여 다루는 기법에 뛰어나다고 생각했는데...

만약 정말로 트럼프가 이기고 이 칼럼이 옳았다고 판명된다면, 왜 기존 여론조사기관들의 조사방법론은 유용치 않게 되었는지 그 과정과 배경이 궁금하네요. 분명히 그 기관들에도 머리좋고 잘배운 사람들이 들어갔을텐데 말이에요.

혹시 후기 다원주의의 문제의식과 같은 문제 때문일까요..

[panchan1]

아. 이게, 이번 대선의 핵심이기도 한데,

이번 대선은 트럼프와 트럼프를 반대하는 사람이 맞붙는 겁니다. 보통은 트럼프와 오바마의 싸움식이 되지만요.

누군가와 누군가를 반대하는 것이 정치적 테제가 되는 것은, 그 자체로 감정의 골이 사회 전반에 있다는 뜻이기도 하고요.

특히 트럼프라는 대상은 반지성주의, 도덕적이지 않은, 특성이 있습니다. 이런 경우, 흔히 지식인 계층이 크게 반발하게 되지요.

그러면, 소위 이야기하는 연구활동을 수행하는 계층 역시나, '과학이 아닌 믿음에 마음을 잡아먹혀' 조사방법에 헛점을 보일 수도 있게됩니다.

[panchan1]

이를테면, 트럼프 지지자의 응답을 듣자마자, 조사원이 빈정거리거나 코웃음을 치면서 후속 질문을 하게 되는 경우 같은 것을 생각해볼 수 있겠죠.

그러면, 당연히 제대로 된 응답을 받기 어렵습니다.

[panchan1]

어차피 곧 현실 최강의 여론조사 '실제선거'가 진행됩니다.

그 결과에 따라서 아무리 과학적이고 정석적인 조사였다고 해도 엉터리가 될 수도 있는 것이 '여론 조사'의 현실이기도 하지요.

[cjs5x5]

판찬님 댓글에 따르면 이번 대선은 '우리의 미국'과 '당신들의 미국'의 대결이군요.

많은 사람들과 언론이 트럼프가 미국을 갈라놓았다고 하지만, 실은 이미 미국은 갈라져있었으며 트럼프 현상은 그저 유별난 특이현상(Anomaly)가 아닌 예정된 숙명이었다고 봐야겠군요. 트럼프가 매일같이 Fake News를 노래하는 이유가 이젠 이해가 되네요.

많은 사람들이 막스 베버의 전통을 따라 계층으로 사회를 보길 원하지만, 이런 현실은 계급론을 꺼낼 수 밖에 없겠군요. 물론 다듬어진 형태로요.