2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHow Analytical Models Failed Clinton
National Politics |By Charlie Cook, December 30, 2016
How Analytical Models Failed Clinton
This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on December 27, 2016
"The November elections pitted Democrats against Republicans, conservatives against liberals, Trump-style populists and tea partiers against the establishment and conventional politicians. Another contest, followed mainly by political aficionados, matched traditional pollsters against newly fashionable analytics wizards, some of whompretentiously in my opinioncalled themselves data scientists.
It was well known that traditional polling was having problems. The numbing effect of billions of telemarketing calls and the advent of caller ID and voice mail had reduced response rates (the percentage of completed interviews for every hundred attempts) from the 40s a couple of decades ago to the high single digits. As they struggled to get truly representative samples, pollsters weighted their data more than ever before, making assumptions of what the electorate would look like on election days that were weeks, months, or even a year or more away. ........
...........Experienced journalists might argue that the overreliance by reporters on both polls and analytics has led to a decrease in shoe-leather, on-the-ground reporting that might have picked up movements in the electorate that the polls missed. As the Michigan results came in on election night, I vividly recalled that two congressmen from Michiganone a Democrat, the other a Republicanhad been warning me for months that Michigan was more competitive than publicly thought. I wished I had listened.
The analytical models for both sides pointed to a Clinton victory, albeit not a runaway. The Clinton campaign and super PACs had several of the most highly regarded polling firms in the Democratic Party, yet in the places that ended up mattering, very little if any polling was done. So while 2016 wasnt a victory for traditional polling, it certainly took a lot of the luster from analytics. In the end, big data mattered very little. ......"
http://cookpolitical.com/story/10205
liberal N proud
(60,971 posts)They can't account for hacking by a foreign government.
They can't account for FBI meddling in an election.
They can't account for a silent media on all the above.
Keeping voters misinformed destroyed the analyst's ability to read the voter.
The election was stolen, PERIOD!
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)LenaBaby61
(6,991 posts)Correct
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)protest votes, couple thousands Ds stay home, and several thousands D voters with wrong address forced to use provisional ballots that got thrown away.
Rstrstx
(1,572 posts)Though not a traditional analytical company there's no question they had a pronounced influence on the election.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)basement demon
(14 posts)And the country.
karynnj
(59,992 posts)they can not be trusted at all. It is surprising they came in as close as they did. It is not JUST a problem that "weighting" is more important, it is that polling ALWAYS had to make an implicit assumption that people in a given demographic cell who answer the phone are similar to their counterparts in the same cell who do not answer. Even when the response rate was in the 40s, that bothered me.
Now the wizards used the polls aggregated and weighted as their models suggested and they pulled in other variables that they had reason to believe were relevant and improved the unmeasurable "accuracy".
The funny thing is that the one thing that might have given more insight was something I always questioned whether it made sense while I did it -- door to door canvassing. Having done it, I know that even if people try to return both a few times to a neighborhood, there are people who fail to come to the door or are not there. There are also some who would not say. (Here, it would be interesting to know if they were willing to say in the prior year. Reading a few analyses, they have noted that less of this was done this year - including in the critical rust belt states. It should also be noted that this is something better done by people "from around here".
I hope that whoever gets the DNC job assigns a good team to look at how this is done in various places and how the data is compiled, both for use in that campaign, but to help building a database so we know who are people are. Combining the voter lists, the voter record of who voted in which elections and any response to a canvasser or phone banker for a prior election would give any future campaign - for any office - a wealth of information. (If you want to go there, they could also get various demographic information if they were willing to pay for it.)
Consider how that data base could give you a red flag long before an election. Let's say that you observe that you are NOT getting the definite yeses you did in a prior election for a set of people, you could have a red flag that something may be wrong. Having someone ask them about likely issues might determine if there is a systemic problem. Then if the issue is something the campaign thinks is a misunderstanding, it could be addressed to try to assure those votes.
I am not naive enough to think that data collected this way is necessarily good -- it might be very good as a sanity check for a telephone poll.